UNICEF Guinea Bissau: The Djau family's story

The Djau family’s story COMMUNITY-BASED SCHOOL READINESS

Schools for Africa

Guinea Bissau

BEYOND BASIC EDUCATION: CHILD FRIENDLY SCHOOLS ‘PLUS’

Thanks to your support, everyone is going to school... not just the children.

Tasselima

Guinea Bissau 2 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

The political and military instability and weak governance that have plagued Guinea Bissau since the country won independence from Portugal in 1973 continue even today to exacerbate poverty and hinder the provision of basic social services—especially in rural areas. As a result, Guinea Bissau is likely to meet few, if any, of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the original target date of 2015. This includes MDG 2—universal basic education— the achievement of which has now been set for 2020.

This does not imply that efforts to achieve this goal will slow down. On the contrary, in order to achieve this goal Guinea Bissau will need to work even harder to boost access to and improve the quality of primary education, especially for its most vulnerable citizens. Despite an increase in overall primary education net attendance rates (from 53.7 per cent in 2006 to 67.4 per cent in 2010), the majority of improvements to education that have taken place in recent years have benefited wealthier, urban children—especially boys—from the capital region, and have had limited impact on the country’s most vulnerable: poor, rural children—most of them girls—who live in the eastern part of the country.

UNICEF is committed to ensuring that all children, especially the most vulnerable, have access to quality education. To this end it has successfully promoted the Child-Friendly School (CFS) model in countries worldwide. Child friendly schools take a holistic approach to education: they are inclusive and gender-sensitive, they have adequate resources and competent teachers who use child-centred teaching methods, they provide safe water and suitable sanitation facilities, and they are designed to make children feel safe and secure. The CFS model also strengthens families and communities by engaging parents, teachers and community members in the functioning of the school.

By 2015 UNICEF’s CFS+ model will be operating in 145 of the country’s most disadvantaged school catchment areas. This pilot programme will benefit 29,000 children and their communities and will ultimately be scaled up to cover the country as a whole.

What success Guinea Bissau has achieved to date has been without the kind of donor support enjoyed by most other sub-Saharan countries.

External financial resources are essential to ensure children’s rights to education are met.

In Guinea-Bissau, we have added a ‘+’ to this model because we have found that in vulnerable communities our impact is greatest when our focus extends beyond basic education to include the family and community. For this reason, each CFS+ primary school comes with an Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre for pre-school age children and an adult literacy centre, which is targeted primarily at the children’s mothers.

The ECD programme provides young children with a solid foundation for future learning before they enter primary school, and literacy training not only provides mothers (only 26 per cent of whom are literate in rural areas) with a valuable skill, it also turns them into the single most effective tool for development there is. Educated mothers are far more likely to send their children—including their daughters—to school. And they are more likely to send them at the right age.

This is particularly important for poor girls in rural Guinea Bissau, more of whom drop out of school due to early marriage and pregnancy than any other cause, and both of which are more likely to happen when girls start school late.

Educated mothers also engage in and promote better health practices and better family nutrition and actively protect their own and their children’s rights.

In the pages that follow you will meet Serendine. She and her family live in the village of Tasselima in Guinea Bissau’s easternmost region, Gabu. Previously, primary school attendance rates in Tasselima were among the lowest in the country: only 22 per cent of school age children attended school.

But then in 2011, UNICEF and its partners opened a child-friendly primary school in the village and at the same time began offering literacy training for interested adults. In 2013 the village’s ECD centre opened its doors. Today everyone in Serendine’s family (except her two year old son) goes to ‘school’.

Schools for Africa The Djau Family’s story 3

My name is Serendine Embalo. My family and I live in the village of Tasselima, near the town of Gabu, in eastern Guinea Bissau. When I was 17 I married Amadu Djau. We have three children: our son Bryma is eight, our daughter Tene is five and our other son, Amadu Saliu, is two. Today, thanks to UNICEF all of us (except AmaduSaliu, who is too young) go to school here in our village. Bryma is in grade one,Tene is at the ‘gymboree’ [Early Childhood Development Centre], and my husband and I attend adult literacy courses.

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06:10

06:35 First thing in the morning I fetch water so the children can wash...

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SERENDINE EMBALO Mother

I started school when I was ten years old and I studied only through grade two. My father didn’t have a son. He wanted me to go to school, but he also needed someone to help him in the field. He took me out of school because if he didn’t we wouldn’t have had anything to eat.

I understood that he needed my help, but I felt very sad to leave school. I knew I wouldn’t be able to read and write and understand what is going on in the world. Even after I got married I still felt regret about leaving school. I kept thinking about what I might have done and learned if I’d had the chance to stay.

All of my days are pretty much the same. I wake up in the morning, sweep, fetch water, bathe the kids, wash the dishes, prepare breakfast and take the oldest two to school. Then I wash the clothes and prepare food. Sometimes I go to work in the field. Other times I pound millet. It’s not an easy life. But that’s normal. What makes me really tired is knowing that my husband and I have nothing.

We are sending my children to school so that they can have a better life. And at the same time we are also going to school—to the literacy centre in our village. I never imagined I would have the chance to go back to school. I am glad that I will be able to help our children with their school work and I am also happy to be learning again. I want to be educated. I want to know how to read and write. I want to improve on what I started a long time ago.

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06:52 ...and I can clean the dishes.

07:14

07:21 I help Bryma and Tene get ready for school. Bryma always insists on putting on his shoes before he puts on anything else.

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07:47 After breakfast, AmaduSaliu and I walk Bryma and Tene to school.

Bryma goes to his classroom.Tene goes with her teacher into the gymboree.

07:53 12 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

08:03 The attendance cards show who is here.

08:12 The morning starts with a song: “This is my head, these are my eyes, this is my mouth...”

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With your UNICEF support...

Piloting community-based ECD UNICEF is working to open sustainable, community-based ECD programmes alongside child-friendly primary schools in its 145 target school catchment areas.

The ECD centres will focus on the school-readiness of young children and will also sensitise parents, community leaders and school directors on Early Childhood Education thematic areas including protection, children’s rights, education, health, water and sanitation and HIV/AIDS. UNICEF will build the sites, engage and provide intensive and continuous training to two communitybased teachers per centre and provide basic materials including an ECD toolkit filled with school materials, toys and games to make the centres operational.

By working to get children into ECD centres at ages four and five, more children will enter primary school on time and ready to learn. And those who start school ahead, typically stay ahead.

Studies show that children who attend some form of early childhood programming do better in primary, and even secondary school, and are far less likely to repeat a grade or drop out.

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MUMINATO BALDE Early Childhood Development (ECD) Facilitator

When the children arrive at the ‘gymboree’ (Early Childhood Development Centre) in the morning, the first thing I do is to greet them, ask them how they are, how was the night, and check that they have eaten and had a bath. Then we sing songs and do activities like writing and drawing and counting and playing games.

The gymboree is new to Tasselima and I think it is bringing some good changes, especially to the children’s behaviour. When they first came here they wouldn’t listen to me. If I asked them to sit down, they wouldn’t do it, if asked them to draw, they wouldn’t do it, if I asked their names, they wouldn’t say. Now they listen and they do as I ask. I am also teaching them to write and count. All of this will prepare them for when they go to school.

The parents are glad to have the gymboree here in the village. They are really happy to see their children learning so many of things.

08:21 ”The children like me to tell them stories using the story cards I made,” says Muminato.

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08:43 ”There is still some fighting when I take

out the blocks and cups and puzzles,” says Muminato.

“But they are learning to share and to respect one another.”

I send Tene to the ‘gymboree’ because I want her to be prepared for school and for life. Her life will be different from mine: she will have a profession as a doctor or a nurse or a teacher.

—Serendine Embalo 18 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

With your UNICEF support...

Supporting efforts to keep girls in school A third of girls nationally, and half of all girls in the east of the country are married and give birth before the age of 18. Ensuring that girls stay in school is essential to combating child marriage and the risks of early pregnancy and HIV. Through its CFS+ programme, UNICEF Guinea Bissau is establishing and training school management committees in each of the 145 primary school catchment areas to liaise with community, religious and traditional leaders to engage in and sustain an ongoing community-level dialogue on the rights of girls. They are also being trained to manage girls’ scholarship schemes and cash transfers to support the efforts of vulnerable families to keep their girls in school. Further UNICEF efforts to keep girls in school will include communication interventions at the community level to make people aware of the dangers of child marriage and the criminal liabilities around forced marriage.

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09:34 The teacher calls for volunteers to lead the

class in reciting the sentences in Portuguese that are on the blackboard.

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09:39 We clap when the others read it well.

09:35 Schools for Africa The Djau Family’s story 21

With your UNICEF support...

DJUÉ CAMARA Head Teacher, Tasselima Primary School

The ‘School Health Package’ Through its CFS+ initiative, UNICEF addresses many of the factors that prevent children from coming to school and receiving a quality education. This includes less obvious factors, such as poor student health.

To this end, UNICEF (through the Wash in Schools programme and an MOU with the World Food Programme on school feeding) supports the Ministry of Health in implementing the ‘School Health Package’ in its target schools.

Once a year these children receive deworming pills, immunisations and information on diarrhoea prevention.

They are also screened for learning difficulties and given age-appropriate information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV/ AIDS. In addition, UNICEF provides training along with posters and other materials to teachers and members of school management committees so that they can promote good health practices in their schools and ensure that children— especially the most vulnerable—are healthy and able to learn.

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Thanks to UNICEF our village has three ‘schools’: a primary school for children in grades one through six, an Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre for children who are four and five years old, and a literacy centre for adults. The three of them work together for the benefit of our children and our community.

The ECD centre is new this year. Its role is to get children ready for the first grade. Previously, children would start school without any preparation. It was a difficult transition. They weren’t used to the school environment or to having so many children in one place. I would have to be with them all the time, watching them and talking to them, until they adjusted. I would also have to acquaint them with books, symbols and letters and work on their motor coordination. Sometimes just achieving these things could take as long as six months.

And then there was the language issue. In this community their first language is Peul [Fulani], but Portuguese is the national language of instruction. This makes it difficult for the children. In the beginning I use both languages, but eventually I move into instruction entirely in Portuguese. Now that we have the ECD this transition should be easier in the future. The children will be at least somewhat familiar with Portuguese by the time they are in the primary school.

The ECD will also help our drop out problem. In Tasselima children have always started school late, so that in grade one you have children who are anywhere from seven to eleven years old. By the time these children are in fourth grade some of them are fourteen or fifteen years

09:42

09:56 24 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

With your UNICEF support...

Promoting birth registration Not registering a child’s birth deprives that child of his or her right to a name and a nationality, and according to research conducted by UNICEF in Guinea Bissau, it also impedes their access to school: children without birth registration account for over 62 per cent of out of school children.

In this as in so many other factors related to children’s schooling, it is the mother’s education level that is key: educated mothers are far more likely to register the births of their children.

UNICEF supports the implementation of Guinea Bissau’s National Plan for Birth Registration by ensuring that children from all of their target communities are registered. In addition to supporting social mobilisation campaigns, UNICEF advocacy has resulted in the Minister of Justice agreeing to waive registration fees for all children from birth through seven years of age. As a result, the number of registered births rose from 19,027 in 2012 to 23,400 in just the first half of 2013.

old. The boys are starting to run after money and some of the girls are being prepared for marriage. We see more children drop out of school in fourth grade than at any other time. But if they go to the ECD when they are four and five, they will progress to primary school on time, so this will no longer be an issue.

From the parents’ side, attending literacy classes is helping them to understand that their children need to go to school. So now they push them to come. And because they understand what homework is, they allow their children the time to do it, instead of just pushing them to do their chores. Parents who attend literacy classes also take better care of their children’s hygiene and sanitation—no longer sending them to school without shoes or in dirty or ripped clothes. And one of the most important changes we see is that women in these classes are interested in sending their daughters to school. They want them to finish school before they have them get married—so that they don’t have to attend literacy classes as an adult.

These classes are also benefitting the wider community. Those who attend are different now. Before, most could not even sign their names.

They had to put their fingerprint on official documents and they felt ashamed of that. Now some of them can write, and even if their writing is not beautiful, you can read it.

I also see a change in their behavior. They are more proactive than the others. They are planning their lives, not just sitting and waiting. Being together at the centre is creating unity towards development as they develop similar ideas about what they want in terms of development and the future. In time, if this continues, the whole of society will benefit.

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10:12

Bryma and Tene help me a lot when they are at home. Some things get behind when they are at school, but I am happy that they are learning. —Serendine

10:23 Amadu Saliu likes to help me when I wash the clothes.

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10:54 The women in the compound take turns cooking lunch. Today is my turn. I am making fish balls with peanut sauce and millet.

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11:37

11:48 While lunch is cooking, I begin to prepare the millet we will eat over the next few days.. After soaking it,

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I pound it, winnow it and pound it again. Working on and off for three days I prepare enough millet for four days.

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12:19 When Tene and Bryma finish school for the day,Tene and the other girls continue to pound the millet until lunch is ready. Then the children and I eat with the other women and children in our compound.

13:08 32 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

14:04 My husband is a farmer and a trader. At this time of the year the work in the fields is finished so he makes and sells fencing and has a small business buying and selling mobile phone credit to people in the village.

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14:22 We walk to class at the literacy centre.

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14:37

14:38 There isn’t anybody at home to look after Amadu Saliu, so he comes to class with us.

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15:07

MAMADOU DJALO Adult literacy facilitator

With your UNICEF support...

Community-based literacy facilitators

In 2011 some people came here from the Ministry of Education. They went to the village chief and the school director and asked if there was anyone in the village with enough education to be a facilitator for adult literacy classes. After the teacher, I am the most educated person in this village. I finished ninth grade in 2008. When they found me I was working in the field. They asked me if I was interested and—after checking with my father—I said yes. I don’t make a lot of money teaching, but that doesn’t matter. I am proud that I went to school and I am glad to have the opportunity to show everybody else that school is good.

When we first opened this centre, the community was not very enthusiastic. They didn’t know what it was. But when I started to teach and to distribute notebooks and pencils, more people came. Now I teach a morning class and an afternoon class five days a week. Each class has about 30 people—most of them women. It isn’t that the men aren’t interested. They work during the day, and then, even when I offer night classes, few come because they are busy with other concerns.

Most of these people are here because their parents never enrolled them in school. Others got married early so they never had the opportunity to go to school. Years later they realized that the world had evolved. Nowadays, if you are not literate you are nothing. That is why they come here.

After sensitizing the community to the benefits of a literacy programme and assessing the numbers of men and women who would benefit in a given community, the Ministry of Education (MEN) selects and, in partnership with UNICEF, trains a community-based facilitator. A literacy centre is then set up in a private home in the village (not a dedicated centre).

By developing adult literacy programmes and policies that engage all actors, the Ministry of Education is working to address the country’s literacy challenges. In rural areas only 57 percent of men and 26 per cent of women are literate. But taking this programme forward requires greater funding, professional support and a coordinated national vision and strategy. By 2015 UNICEF will have set up literacy centres in each of its 145 target school catchment areas, thereby benefitting tens of thousands of parents and community members and their children.

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With your UNICEF support...

The adult literacy curriculum In most of its adult literacy centers UNICEF is now piloting a Cubandesigned curriculum that was successfully piloted in Brazil—and thus translated into Portuguese (the official language of Guinea Bissau). The programme is on a series of DVDs and uses a variety of life skills including civic responsibility, peace building, nutrition, sexual and reproductive health/HIV and child protection to teach literacy and numeracy. To take advantage of these resources, UNICEF is working to outfit each of its literacy centers with a solarpowered TV, light and DVD player.

(Literacy classes also rely on instruction by the teacher in the national language, Créole and local languages.)

UNICEF Guinea Bissau is currently reviewing the adult literacy curriculum and these learning tools with a view towards supporting the MEN in drafting national literacy policy and expanding the adult literacy programme.

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In our classes I don’t only teach them about letters and numbers. I also teach them about good hygiene habits for themselves and their children, about keeping their home environment clean, about health, about preventing HIV and AIDS, and about good behaviour in the market and the village.

When I first started teaching I kept having to ask people to pay attention and there was a lot of shouting. But now things are better in the classroom—and in our community. Before families would fight each other and people would take sides with hammers, knives and other weapons, but now when people are fighting others say to them ‘If you had been to school your behaviour would be better.’

Our main challenge is materials. My students come to me and say ‘I don’t have an exercise book’ or ‘I don’t have a pencil’, and they don’t want to spend their money on school supplies. I beg them to just buy a notebook and come to class.

Another challenge is that I have not yet received the television and the training DVD for the classes. I am trained to facilitate those classes, but right now I am still teaching the lessons in the traditional way.

I like this work. At the beginning, a lot of the people in my classes couldn’t even hold a pencil. They dropped it all the time. Now they can write beautifully, they can copy from the blackboard and they know the alphabet—though they still can’t really put letters together to make words. I like it that people are participating. Their interest keeps me going.

15:11

I never went to school. When I was young parents didn’t want to send their girls to school.

They didn’t want us to know too much. They were afraid we wouldn’t want to get married.

15:27

—Salimatu Bale, literacy student

15:38 The teacher

calls his older brother, Moustaffa, to come up and write on the blackboard.

Sometimes I buy exercise books and pens for everyone. I am in the class too. I want all of us to learn. I don’t want to lose time. I want everyone in this village to get an education. Most of theses people want to go to school because they don’t want to put their fingerprint on official papers anymore. They want to be able to sign their name and to read and write a little. Personally, I want to go further than that. I am tired of having to rely on others to read or write letters for me. And when I am out and about I want to be able to read the signs. If they say stop here, I’ll know I need to stop. I feel embarrassed not to be able to read and write. It was my father’s great mistake not to send me to school.

—Moustaffa Djalo, literacy student Schools for Africa The Djau Family’s story 43

15:47

AMADU DJAU Father

I decided to come to literacy classes because I know that in order to have a good job, I need to be able to read and write. I have a growing family and I have nothing to give them. I need to do more than just work in the field.

I never went to school as a child, but I am sending my children. I recognise that if I had gone to school, things would have been different.

I want to do everything I can to help my children be more than me. With what I am learning at the literacy centre I hope I will be able to teach them a bit more than they are learning now. They are only at school for four hours a day, and that is not enough. If I know something, I will be able to teach them at home and help them with their homework. Otherwise, when they come home they will just put their books aside and forget about them.

Being literate will also help me with my business as a trader. I want to be able to read an agreement before I sign it and know that I was given the correct amount of change. If you can read and write, no one can cheat you.

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16:14 I am glad we have a teacher here who can help us.

16:22 46 UNICEF Guinea Bissau

Education thrives when everyone in the family and the community take part.

UNICEF is working with the government, local education authorities and NGOs to provide a range of services that make schools into centres of change within their communities.

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ABOUT UNICEF Thank you for believing that all children have the right to an education.

Together with you, UNICEF is working to make a difference for all children, everywhere, all the time. All children have rights that guarantee them what they need to survive, grow, participate and fulfill their potential. Yet every day these rights are denied. Millions of children die from preventable diseases. Millions more don’t go to school, or don’t have food, shelter and clean water. Children suffer from violence, abuse and discrimination. This is wrong.

UNICEF works globally to transform children’s lives by protecting and promoting their rights. Their fight for child survival and development takes place every day in remote villages and in bustling cities, in peaceful areas and in regions destroyed by war, in places reachable by train or car and in terrain passable only by camel or donkey.

Their achievements are won school by school, child by child, vaccine by vaccine, mosquito net by mosquito net. It is a struggle in which success is measured by what doesn't happen—by what is prevented.

UNICEF will continue this fight—to make a difference for all children, everywhere, all the time.

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We receive no money from the UN budget.

Photography, writing and design: Kelley Lynch

UNICEF Guinea Bissau

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