Celebrating the new school year, Violet Organization has embarked on a series of activities, including conducting awareness campaigns and distributing educational aid, it offered to thousands of the primary school students in Idlib, its countryside and the rural parts of western Aleppo.
Through its campaign, My School is the Secret to My Happiness, the organization aims to provide over 6700 children in Aleppo and Idlib provinces with access to education.
The campaign covers the camps of Melis and Qadimun, the villages of Bsaliya and Haranbush in the western Idlib countryside, as well as the Aidoun camp in Salqin town, north of Idlib.
It also addresses the village of Mseibin in southern Idlib and Taftanaz town located northeast of Idlib, in addition to Rif Mohandessin and Atarb, western Aleppo.
The campaign, which will continue into October, is aimed at raising awareness and advocating for the mobilization of civic institutions, local communities, donors, and organizations as elaborated in the campaign’s plan which has been shared with Enab Baladi.
Further, the campaign works to mobilize resources and introduce innovations to improve the quality of the educational environment in the long run.
Support and activities in and out of school
The Director of the Protection Programme in Violet Organization, Ibrahim Sarmini, told Enab Baladi that the organization has started its campaign’s activities at al-Thawra School in Idlib in early October.
The organization’s team waited for the children at the schoolyard, where they had them draw, play and enjoy several competitions.
In addition to decorating the classrooms, the team distributed books, stationery and candy to children.
School rules were also set up, for the students were distributed to classes and a student council was formed to convey the students’ proposals to their teachers and get them engaged in school plans.
The parents of the students were invited to visit the school to establish the Parent-Teacher Committee.
My school is the Secret to My Happiness campaign is heading to Melis Camp next week, equipped with a caravan which has a projector and a mobile library.
The campaign is accompanied by a team to follow up and carry out support and protection activities for children. Moreover, it will use the ASER standard tests to fathom the skills of children who have reading disorders.
The team will also distribute leaflets to raise awareness about the importance of school, showing the locations of schools and the available services at them.
Emergency response
The campaign is part of the “emergency response plan aimed at children living under olive trees,” stated the director of the protection program in the Violet Organization, Ibrahim Sarmini.
The campaign has a fixed program of recreational and educational activities, such as marathon sports and shadow theater.
The campaign is launched by the organization to ensure that children are not interrupted from education fully in the informal camps of the northern and western Idlib countryside.
Sarmini added that the organization has developed a training plan for adolescents aged between 15 to 18 years old, living in informal camps.
The training will include protection and emergency activities so that they can protect themselves and save their families during accidents or disasters.
Through an assessment issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 25 September, the United Nations (UN) estimated that 150 thousand children are in need of immediate education assistance.
The UN also indicated that only half of the schools can operate, lacking capacity due to a shortage of funding and insecurity in north-western Syria.