THE EDUCATOR

I was appalled by the level of the “I don’t-care-attitude” that most university students had towards health education when I served as the Project Coordinator to a student’s organization at the university. The giant student-led organization (membership of over 1200 students) had the mandate, among others, to sensitize the university and neighboring community about the means to prevent the contraction of HIV/AIDS, prevention of early pregnancies, community engagement among other issues. We organized weekly sessions to discuss selected topics, outside picnics for youth engagement, World AIDs Day celebrations and free HIV/AIDS testing sessions, which sometimes we had to do at night just to attract many target clients and distributed condoms that we received from National AIDS Control Council and other donors. The night sessions were fancifully called “moonlighting sessions” to attract students- there was music booming from the mounted loudspeakers but the focus was to test for HIV/AIDs ...

I had an opportunity of serving as the Project Coordinator and later as Assistant Head of Programs to a humanitarian organization sponsored by UNICEF in South Sudan. The organization’s name, Abyei Development Association (ADA), had political intonations given the struggle for Abyei between the Sudan and South Sudan. Based in Juba, the capital, ADA’s area of operation was on the border of South Sudan and Sudan, a distance of more than 800km from Juba. Furthermore, ADA was not operating in Abyei Region, a special designated region, but in Abiemnom County, part of the larger Unity State. ADA had taken up the burden of implementing education projects to pupils in far-flanked area of Abiemnom County in Unity State of South Sudan. The name of project was aptly named, Education in Emergency (EiE) Project, a befitting number for an area occupied by returnees of civil war and which did not speak English as their language of instruction, even though the curriculum for learners is in English. ...

“If you wanted to change a culture in a single generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children.” Schooling the world documentary The race towards universal primary education has been ongoing since the start of this millennium. The annual GEM Report 2017 indicates that only  1 out of every 5 countries in the world  guarantees free primary education. Even in developed countries where the high rates of school drops are reported the race for universal primary education is far from over. Closer home in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), governments and education stakeholders are making efforts to ensure that every child has access to equal educational opportunities irrespective of their circumstances. But the challenges remains; including the lack of total elimination of school dropout and lack of equal opportunity of access to educational opportunities for all learners regardless of their social and economic background. In  Sch...