SAACID began its education programming in 1996, when it became obvious that no local political compromise was going to eventuate and that the international community had indeed largely walked away from Somalia. Since that time SAACID has developed primary and secondary in the Benadir (Greater Mogadishu) and Middle Shabelle regions of Somalia.
SAACID has been able to produce 3% year-on-year growth in its education sector from 1996 to 2009. In 2009, for the first time ever, SAACID's education sector was severely constrained by fighting between the UN and Western-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and opposition factions. Due to a lack of respect for schools by all sides, parents have not allowed their children to travel to school. As a result, 80% of SAACID's fee-paying student population have been lost; and this has resulted in SAACID having to lay-off 50% of its primary and secondary school teachers. The level of discriminant targeting of the civilian population continues; and SAACID foresees no improvement throughout 2010.
SAACID runs the schools in partnership with local communities where the schools are based. The local communities help determine the curriculum, set dress standards, strategic planning, discipline, etc. The local communities donate the site for the school and provide the surety of security to allow SAACID to invest the significant sums necessary to develop the sites back to bearable conditions. In all cases, the communities have chosen to have the national Somali or Kenyan syllabus taught in English. Even rural communities perceive English as the language of commerce (Somalis are intuitive merchants).The schools are fee-based, so each family sending a child to school has to pay monthly school fees. There is no other way in the current context to ensure that teachers can be paid and some maintenance provided for the buildings. Literally hundreds of attempts have been made to provide free education, but unless the money is coming from external sources (i.e., Somali diaspora or Islamic charities) the schools are not sustainable and they close. SAACID has no local recurrent funding base and no recurrent external funding stream. SAACID relies totally on school fees to operate its existing school network.
SAACID does desire to further develop its school network, as only a fraction of Somali children currently have an opportunity to access even rudimentary education, but SAACID is severely hampered by a lack of development capital. The capital we have been able to secure comes through a process of project proposals to sovereign governments with missions based in Nairobi, Kenya. The Australian and Dutch governments have provided funding inputs through that lobbying process.
The volunteers and friends of SAACID-Australia have also worked very hard to donate, collect, sort, pack and ship 62.9 tonnes of second-hand books to Somalia for libraries in our schools. The Australian High Commission in Nairobi supported this initiative by providing the funding necessary to ship these books on 2 occasions; Mennonite central Committee (MCC) has supported shipping once; and on two occasions private donations from Australia have covered the costs of shipping. More than 75 public and private schools in Queensland, Australia have donated books. Zonta (Caboolture) - an international women's NGO - continually collected books for this initiative. Save the Children (Margate) also donated many tonnes of books, clothing and toys for this initiative.
| For photo galleries from some of SAACID's primary and secondary school activity, visit our Primary and Secondary School Photo Galleries. |
If you would like to know more about our education programming, or like to contribute to future programming, please feel free to contact us.
Human Interest Stories
2010
Faadumo Mohamed Hassan - May 2010