Education Base

Education in Difficult Circumstances Research, Resources, Training and Publications

January 2017

Founded in 1991 as the Education Programme for Sudanese Refugees, Education Base is a Consultancy organisation specialising in Education and Training in difficult circumstances, whether slow-burn situations such as in displaced camps and slum areas or in situations of crisis during and after civil conflict and natural disasters.

Education Base bridges the gap between humanitarian intervention (such as emergency training) and development, recognizing that there is no quick fix for good education and training. Education Base is comfortable working in multi-cultural settings and working with individuals, groups and government authorities.

Education Base designs, implements and evaluates projects. At the programme level, Education Base also advises and assists you to develop sound educational policy.  Education Base carries out surveys and research using local youth teams familiar with the area and the people we work for.

Education Base has many years’ educational experience, especially work for youth, refugees, displaced people, street children and children affected by the AIDS epidemic.  Education Base will work anywhere and is currently has teams and offices in Eastern Congo, Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda.

Education Base has carried out consultancies for - or managed projects - for the British Council, DfID, European Commission, and many NGOs.  Education Base’s staff have worked for and with UNDP/UNOPS, UNHCR, UNESCO-PEER, IOM, World Bank, UNICEF, Government, ILO, USAID, MINUSCA, MINUSMA, MONUSCO; British Council/DFID, INGOs such as NRC and Save the Children. Windle Trust; Schools, churches, youth organisations

Education Base has provided advice for new NGOs setting up, training for NGO staff, provided management for an NGO for an interim period. 

It is a basic principle of Education Base that it also provides capacity-building for all with whom it works. All field managers and most staff of Education Base are nationals of the country they work in.

Who do we work for?

Youth

Education Base has a special focus on youth and has set up or supported youth centres, youth clubs, youth magazines and youth FM radio. Education Base has provided and implemented itself programmes for Children and Youth affected by the AIDS epidemic and by war, including ex-militias, youth in and out of school, working or unemployed.

In Goma, and other locations in Congo we provide livelihood skills, especially in languages and IT and Communication technology.

We specialise in providing peer-educators for Life Skills and HIV/AIDS prevention among youth.

Those who find it difficult to get education

Education Base has worked extensively with refugees, returnees, displaced people, and, importantly with those who were trapped behind the lines or isolated in occupied areas (the ‘stayees’).  In Uganda we teach young women who had been abducted by the LRA. They now learn following an accelerated (‘catch-up’) primary learning programme.  Their babies are looked after in a crèche while they are in class.

This includes the normally unreached: the unemployed or partly employed who have never completed their education, house-girls and houseboys, young people with no means to go to normal schools, those who are normally missed out, passed over or ignored. This can be by accelerated and catch-up education, or improvement of their language and communication skills.

Civil servants, NGO employees, Self-employed

Education Base provides courses (both direct and by distance methods) to upgrade the Communication Skills of Government staff and NGO workers as well as the self-employed. We train NGO workers in all aspects of report-writing, project proposal design and writing. This appeals particularly to women’s NGOs.

Teachers

Education Base supports and trains teachers by direct and distance education methods. We train emergency teachers on the job where the teaching force needs to be rebuilt and can do this in English, French, Swahili and Arabic. 

Education Base Languages

Education Base has a special objective which is to improve the quality of language and communication skills at all levels, including oral work designed for those such as radio announcers who need oral skills. We teach English, French, and Swahili in our different centres.  There is a special emphasis on helping people to know their existing level using tests we have developed.

Recent studies

OOSC Mali

OOSC Guinea

Registered in Uganda: 2012 No 159576

South Sudanese Refugees in North Uganda

Hi, I am Barry Sesnan, quality adviser and co-founder of Education Base.  

Education Base is a small organisation in Uganda which is dedicated to helping youth who can't stay in school, usually because they have to work to help their families.  
We do this by running local drop-in centres (Echo Bravo centres) which provide a place to learn, often in the evening, a place to be (when home is overcrowded and has no space  or light), a place to improve skills,  a place to charge a phone or consult the internet and the support to study in breaks during the working day with distance education manuals and on their smartphones.

Sometimes this level of support is enough to discourage migration to Europe by providing some hope of a better footer at home.  We are starting such centres in Mali, Central African Republic and D R Congo where we have local and competent members.

The current problem: There is a massive influx of refugees into Northern Uganda from the renewed civil war in South Sudan.  Our recent study there shows that the refugee youth need exactly this kind of support so they can use this time in exile profitably, even if they have no work to do.

The centres, having libraries and copying equipment, also serve to support the teachers (often volunteers) and new schools to avoid each school having to be fully stocked at first. 

In the second phase, not covered by this plea, we want teachers to have laptops / tablets with all the support they need to teach the curriculum.

We want to set up as many as 11 centres in the camps one of which, the Mother Centre will be more advanced and complex and will supply the others with materials and a rotating teaching staff.

The money will be used to provide two rooms and a small office (with solar power and small generator) in each centre (often situated in a school or admin centre), a mother centre of four rooms with wi-fi and a stock of books, charts and materials.   There will be a stipend for a local teacher or senior youth to look after the centre.  

This is an urgent need with the new year, and because the centres can roll out easily one by one the funds can be put to good use quite quickly.  With three thousand pounds we can do a small centre and run it for six months.  We would need 9000 pounds for the mother centre.  A field motorbike would be required at approx approximately 2000 pounds. 

This is very important to us because we have done it successfully before; indeed some of the older centres set up during the last crisis (but in a slightly different area) are still open. The current refugees are often the families of those who benefitted from the system in the 90s and they wholeheartedly support us setting up these new ones.  In those days the centres were the only connection for the refugees to the outside world and served as post office, community centre, home for clubs and sports and training centres.  

During the start up phase we will be hoping to get further funding to supplement funds hopefully raised by this phase.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/26/fleeing-war-south-sudanese-create-booming-camps-in-uganda.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fworld+(Internal+-+World+Latest+-+Text)

Relaunch in 2014

FW: ethical question

 

In the recent kidnapping incident in Dadaab, where I am based just now, a driver was killed and another driver and staff member were shot, one seriously.   

 

The four expatriate hostages, our colleagues from here, Nairobi and Oslo, were eventually rescued by a combination of the Kenya army and Somali warlords after a walk of three nights into Somalia. One was injured; another developed a badly infected foot.

 

In a recent incident involving a CARE team visiting a camp, five policemen in the escort car were blown up. Two lost their legs. Again they were there to protect agency staff.

 

Kenyan colleagues say (almost openly) that we put them in danger if we are on missions with them.  

 

The police become victims for us also.

 

In this context, since I am not allowed to visit the camps just now for security reasons, and have to stay permanently within the secure compound, I am not expecting to be here beyond the end, in September, of the current short contract.  

 

It remains to be seen if I will be deployed elsewhere.

 

Barry Sesnan

Uganda +256 757 219 288

Kenya +254 734 338 434

Skype: barryechobravo

 

FW: NRC Dadaab

 

Hi all

 

I am here in Dadaab, Kenya doing an interim manager position for NRC; I came just eight days ago.

 

This morning there was a high level NRC delegation from Nairobi and Oslo. They were in three cars visiting projects in the camps, and they were ambushed at the gate of the NRC new compound in Ifo 2 camp.

 

One dead, two injured and four kidnapped. The kidnapped are all expatriate colleagues (Norwegian, US-Pakistani, Canadian, Philippino;  we all had breakfast together this morning).  They are assumed to have been taken into Somalia (just 100km from here). The Kenya army is in pursuit with helicopters.

 

I am safe as I had not joined the delegation going to the camps, since they were to visit my project in Dadaab town on their return.  

 

More later

 

 

Barry Sesnan

Uganda +256 757 219 288

Kenya +254 734 338 434

Skype: barryechobravo

http://barrysbook.blogspot.com/

 

Mandate for protection

"UNISFA, the Ethiopian peacekeepers [in Abyei], have a mandate for civilian protection but they do not have a mandate for cattle protection".

 

Reminds me of the Banyoro in Kasenyi who wanted UN to convey all their cattle for them back to Uganda. When I suggested that they could sell one to hire a barge of a lorry, I was regarded as crazy.  

 

 

Reading and guarding

In Eastern Chad night security guards, often quite qualified formally, welcome the chance to have some electricity and to study at night for the courses, often at university level, they attend during the day. They pay for it all themselves despite the miserable salaries they get from the security companies*.

 

In Abidjan I was talking to a guard just now who, like all the others here, never seems to read anything. I asked him why he doesn't use his time to study and he said 'because madame is not here'. I was puzzled by this and asked him to explain. He said that he will study if Madame (the one he guards) gives him a book.  I suggested he buy his own, which never seemed to have occurred to him. 

 

How come that a very poor and officially highly illiterate country like Chad produces highly motivated people while a rich country like Cote d'Ivoire actually has a quite high illiteracy rate but I am sure the guard I was talking to could read).  It is to do with motivation, of course and, I think, mutual support. In some countries a boy who opens a book while he has free time or on a bus say is ridiculed by his friends. At least among the southerners of Chad  studying for yourself is supported and understood by your friends.

 

There is a cultural element, certainly, but it's not as simple as it seems.  In Chad they are usually southerners ie 'African' and often Christian, but not always.  In Cote d'Ivoire it is not really clear what is going on, as there are plenty of night schools (cours de soir) and plenty of people filling them.  

 

 

*Often run quite fiercely by French ex-soldiers on behalf of some shadowy 'big person'.  We pay about 400 dollars a month to the company; the guard gets 100 dollars if he is lucky.  Thus the UN shucks off its responsibility to be a good employer. 

Slates

UNICEF in Chad, like in many other countries gives primary school kits both to Chadian schools and to schools in the camps for refugees from Darfur, Sudan.   

 

These kits usually contain slates and because of the fact that the ordering is often centralized the kit may contain slates whether the teachers in the receiving country use them or not. As it happens, Sudanese teachers do not have a culture of using slates in their teaching.  However, as a colleague showed me, the slates do not go to waste. Four slates laid flat side by side make an excellent table top and these tables are beginning to be found in the small restaurants in the camps, and doubtless in homes. 

 

In this there is a throwback to the donation of cloth number and alphabet charts by UNESCO-PEER amongst others in the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa.

 

They made excellent tablecloths and curtains.    

The dangers of tarmacking roads!

When life started coming back to Juba in 2005 (I was one of the first to arrive there by road) they said the motor-bike boys were the cause of AIDS. Juba had been totally enclaved and had virtually no AIDS at all.

They may have been right.

One of the evening roles of motor-bike guys (who are called 'clando-man' here in Chad, motard in Congo. boda-boda boys in most other places) is to bring the guy to the gal or the gal to the guy. We used them as peer educators in Goma and told them to carry condoms to give/sell (and let's face it, use).

Motorcycle-Related Trauma in South Sudan: a cross sectional observational study.

Andrew Allan, University of Birmingham. AXA615@bham.ac.uk

Abstract

Motorcycle related trauma is a major cause of morbidity in those of working age in the developing world1. One

hundred and sixteen patients involved in motorcycle related accidents were identified over four weeks at the Juba

Teaching Hospital in South Sudan. Of these 84% were male with an average age of 26.7 years. Most male

injuries involved drivers, whereas the majority of female injuries were to pedestrians. The commonest injuries

were lacerations, abrasions and fractures, and the commonest regions injured were the lower and upper limbs

and the head and face.

Forty-four patients were admitted to the ward. Forty six percent of men interviewed did not hold a license,

96.5% of drivers and 91.3% of passengers were not wearing a helmet and 24.6% of drivers were under the

influence of alcohol at the time of injury.

The vast majority of accidents occurred on surfaced roads within Central Juba. This study highlights the need

for tighter regulation of motorcycle ownership, usage and personal safety in addition to wider infrastructural

development. In doing this it might be possible to reduce morbidity and the socioeconomic impact on those

involved in motorcycle related accidents and the families who depend on them.

Significant injuries to the head and face were recorded, but no enquiries were made about cognitive impairment.

Organised rehabilitation of those injured needs serious consideration by the Ministry of Health.

Background

A recent influx of petrochemical and charitable

organizations has turned Juba into a crowded

overpopulated city and brought a new wave of

inexperienced motorists. Many young men are

using their motorcycles as makeshift taxis, often

without licences or personal protection. This

coupled with poor road conditions has created a

perfect environment for motorcycle related trauma

(MRT).

The aim of this study was to determine:

1. The extent of the problem of MRT in Juba

2. The demographics of those involved

3. The method and extent of injury and

4. Contributing risk factors.

These data might help to develop a strategy to

reduce MRT and its serious impact on those

involved.

Method

The study took place over four weeks (15th April –

10th May 2009) at Juba Teaching Hospital at the

emergency surgical outpatient department and the

trauma and surgical wards.

To assess how representative these patients were of

the overall road traffic-related trauma caseload,

clinical details of all patients admitted following

road traffic accidents to the surgical and emergency

wards between April 2008 and April 2009 were

examined.

Results

A total of 116 patients were identified over the 4-

week period and 44 (38%) were admitted. All

recorded cases took place between 7.45 and 22.00

hours with a peak time between 12.00 and 16.00

hours. The percent of the accidents occurring at

different locations were:

 main paved roads in central Juba 70.2%

 outskirts of the city on unpaved road 8.8%

 within 10 miles of Juba 10.6%

The remainder occurred over 10 miles from the

hospital.

Characteristics of patients

Of the 116 patients:

 97 (84%) were males and 19 (16%) were

females.

 The average age was 27.4 years for males and

24.1 years for females

 23 were children (<16 years) and 21 were

unemployed. The remainder were students (≥16

years in full time education) or in paid

employment of which 10 were military

personnel.

 58 were drivers (all males), 23 were passengers,

and 35 were pedestrians.

Found in my old papers! School in a Box

Hi friends and colleagues,

 

There has been occasional controversy on the first use of the term and concept of a ‘School in a Box’. 

 

I found this old article from Refugees magazine in 1989 and I am copying it for those (the Anthonies, Elisa) who were involved when we created this powerful response to the way displaced schools were treated in Khartoum, often being bulldozed at 5 minutes’ notice.   The concept was to have everything in a box – but also, sadly to be able to pack the school back into the box and carry it away to a safe place.  Being displaced in Khartoum then, as now, was a very precarious existence. (Anthony Sebit, Anthony Wani and I wrote the study ‘Creating a Future’  at this time describing the state of education for southerners both in the north and in Juba).   

 

The School-in-a-box was accompanied by the ‘Teacher Assistance Course’, for untrained ‘volunteer’ teachers which was written by SOLU (which at that time also initiated the Foundation course for over-age southerners, a modular self-help course, which was widely used and trialled in JRS evening education centres).  

 

This was an ancestor of the current ‘Bon Enseignant’ and ‘Be  Better Teacher’ (written in UNESCO-PEER in Hargeisa) courses.

 

The SOLU integrated package was carried to Somalia by UNESCO-PEER in 1990.   This then with further development became TEP, which was one of the responses to the Rwanda emergency and has now been widely used and developed for example by NRC, with strong emphasis on the training side.  

 

Of course I have oversimplified and there were many valuable contributions to its development, though in some cases it also lost its flexibility and became fossilised.

 

It developed further in Zambia as the Spark/Zedukit Community Schools project, which is still running.  

 

There have been so many subkits (teacher’s kit, pupils’ kit, school kit, sports kit, science kit – the latter goes back a long way with Michael Brophy now of the Africa Educational Trust being an expert).

 

I am in the process of writing all this up and I wonder if anyone can push the dates back earlier and/or fill in more details.

 

In SOLU we would never claim to have originated the idea of a school kit, but we did claim the name!   As they say there are sometimes ‘many fathers’, but at least one agency’s strange claim in their 60^th anniversary publicity to have invented it in Tanzania in 1994 is forgetful of their own important role in developing the concept earlier than that!  

 

Barry

 

From: Barry Sesnan [mailto:bsesnan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 9:29 PM
To: 'Vance Culbert'; dabla toure; 'Eldrid Kvamen Midttun'; Solveig Borgenvik Voll
Cc: 'Eva Ahlen'; Tim Brown (brownunhcr@yahoo.com)
Subject: Found in my old papers!

 

The photos were not provided by me.

FW: For all you ex- or would be- AIDS activists

Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman:
"And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?" the reporter
asked.
She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

Barry Sesnan

Loath

From a report:

NGO officials are loath to put a figure on lives potentially saved or

additional people helped if the money spent on transportation went to

food instead, but one analyst said it could roughly double the number

of beneficiaries based on the assumption that 70-80 million people now

receive US food aid annually.

This must be a record, as NGOs are wont to slap a figure usually with a lot of zeroes onto anything that moves (and doesn’t!).  But we know we are still in familiar territory with ‘roughly double’ and then the estimated figure in millions which means that they were not really loath after all.