ECW Supports Chad With $2m Grant To Ameliorate Impact Of Massive Floods

Posted by Eric Ojo Latest Headlines, News Around Africa Monday, March 13th, 2023

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has announced a new fast-acting $2 million First Emergency Response Grant for Chad to ameliorate the impact of the massive floods that swept across the country recently.

This is coming as a response to floods that destroyed and damaged schools as well as impacted 1.5 million people in the West African nation.

ECW is the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. It supports quality education outcomes for refugee, internally displaced and other crisis-affected girls and boys, so no one is left behind.

The organization works through the multilateral system to both increase the speed of responses in crises and connect immediate relief and longer-term interventions through multi-year programming. ECW works in close partnership with governments, public and private donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other humanitarian and development aid actors to increase efficiencies and end siloed responses.

The ECW investment delivered through UNICEF in a consortium with Humanity and Inclusion and TECHNIDEV (a national NGO in Chad that specializes in the use of information technologies in development), will support access to quality protective learning environments for 47,000 students impacted by the massive floods.

Almost 1.5 million people across 19 of Chad’s 23 provinces were impacted by devastating flooding in late 2022. In all, over 1,200 schools were affected, with 4,200 classrooms damaged or destroyed. Significant damage to water posts and school latrines worsened the impact of the flood.

Consequently, thousands of children didn’t return to school in October 2022, raising concerns of child protection issues, gender-based violence, forced labour and other grave violations of their human rights.

Girls are especially at risk. In Chad, only 40 percent of girls complete a primary education, compared to 54 percent of boys. The impacts of climate change, forced displacement, instability, endemic poverty and other factors continue to derail efforts to ensure universal access to education for refugee, displaced persons, and host-community children.

To respond to the challenge, ECW’s new grant will ensure access to inclusive and protective education environments for girls and boys including children with disabilities. Girls and boys impacted by the floods will receive appropriate academic and psychosocial support, including access to distance learning.

Executive Director of ECW, Yasmine Sherif said the climate crisis is an education crisis which requires speedy action when it occurs and humanitarian-development coherence to rebuild.

“In Chad and across the Sahel, children’s futures are being ripped from their hands. With floods, droughts and other climate-related crises impacting the educational trajectories of 40 million children worldwide, we must move faster to respond to the immediate impact and ensure we provide girls and boys with access to safe and protective learning environments, while also continuing multi-year investments towards sustainable mitigation of the risks.

“We call on leaders to urgently mobilize more funding to support ECW’s education emergency and multi-year responses in Chad to ensure that no child is left behind”, she added.

UNICEF Representative in Chad, Jacques Boyer noted that the ECW grant will allow children, both girls and boys, to return to school and benefit from quality education in a safe, protective and inclusive environment after the worst floods in Chad’s recent history.

Meanwhile, this new 12-month grant builds on the impact of ECW’s ongoing Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Chad, which has already reached over 800,000 children through $38 million in total funding to date. Approximately 10 percent of ECW investments in Chad are delivered through national and local partners.