John Plastow is the Programme Director for CARE International UK
There is a corner in a part of the world commonly associated with the worst kinds of upheaval that is quietly making some surprising positive change happen, while all around it there is turmoil.
Girls’ education in Somaliland: The start of a quiet revolution
Signs of development
The region is very dry, home to a population principally made up of pastoralist communities and a place not blessed by huge amounts of natural resources. Throw in the turmoil that has beset the region for decades and the refusal of the international community to collectively recognise its claims to statehood and the odds in its favour are not great.
Despite that, there are visible signs of development: the burgeoning infrastructure and commerce in the capital Hargeisa, and the evidence of activity in rural areas shown by the numerous sign-boards of various international organisations that have sprung up along the thin corridor of roads leading to the barren interior of the country
A quiet revolution is taking place
A few years ago the Somaliland education system was on its knees after the break-up of the former Somali state and the conflict that this engendered, resulting in huge damage to infrastructure and to closure at various times of core services, including schooling.
Had you been lucky enough to have got to school in a rural area you would almost certainly have been a boy.
Today, however, in schools up and down Somaliland, a quiet revolution is taking place behind the packed desks which are now being filled by the brightly-coloured uniforms of school girls.
“I want her to go to university”
On my visit I met with some of these girls in the remote rural primary school in Habereshey and talked with the mothers with daughters in school, some of whom were themselves taking adult literacy classes. One of the mothers, Fatima Ali, proudly showed off her own ability to read and write and also to be able to use her mobile phone to make money transfers.
“Since I have started to take classes my attitude towards my daughter’s education has changed completely,” she told me. “I now check what she has been doing and make her study at home. I want her to go to university.”
http://www.careinternational.org.uk/new ... revolution
