The “Steps” Organization has cut its funds off the “Kafr Dariyan Martyrs” School in rural Idlib, which provides its services to more than 670 students, leading the latter to call on concerned entities to address the situation.
On Friday, October 12, Tarek Hammal, the school principal, told Enab Baladi that the school is one of the best at the Kafr Dariyan village, especially following the success it realized last year.
Hammal added that the funds were totally cut off the school at the beginning of this school year, which puts the students, the educational process and its continuity at a risk.
The school provides more than 670 female and male students with education, of whom 320 students are displaced from other areas.
According to the school’s principal, 25 male and female teachers are responsible for the student’s education, all of whom are volunteers and half of whom are displaced from other areas.
In the past years, schools in Idlib witnessed the increasing number of dropouts, the key reasons to which are shelling and the worsening education as a result of the rift between the “Interim Government” and the “Salvation Government.”
In the past a few days, the issue of many organizations’ refrain from offering funding went viral, a situation triggered by the security chaos in the area and the intervention in their work.
Hammal stated that the school needs urgent funding as to continue offering its services, otherwise it will face a massive difficulty, which might, at the end, lead to student’s deprivation of their right to education.
He called on all the organizations and associations, active in the “liberated areas,” to address the school’s dilemma and offer the needed funding.
Throughout seven years of conflict, the Syrian educational sector suffered massive losses, due to which more than two million children dropped out of school, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICIF) as stated by the report it published on April 23, 2018.
The organization attributed the Syrian children’s dropping out from schools to the damage that befell 309 education utilities as a result of armed conflict, for one out of three schools is rendered out of service since 2011, either for being a target to shelling or for turning into a make shift center for displaced people.