RET’s programs in Chad have, since 2005, aimed at mitigating the risks and vulnerabilities brought forth by the large-scale displacement of populations during the Darfur War in Sudan. For over a decade, RET has provided relevant learning opportunities to young refugee women and men in eleven refugee camps of eastern Chad, as well as in N’Djamena, Abeche, Hadjer Hadid, Goz Beida, Koukou and Aradi. This includes accelerated, accredited primary education, literacy and numeracy as well as formal, accredited secondary education. UNHCR stated in August 2018 that Chad currently has 450,000 refugees and 3,500 asylum seekers and that there were still over 336,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad, making the displaced Sudanese in Chad 74% of the total refugees and asylum seekers. In 2011, in partnership with UNHCR, RET also started supervising tertiary education scholarships for refugees.
RET implements a multifaceted approach in Chad promoting youth-led projects, peace clubs and theatre to mitigate against tensions between the host and refugee communities.
Projects
Protecting Displaced Youth through Sustainable Secondary Education
The project aimed at protecting the Sudanese refugees by increasing their resilience and self-reliance through quality secondary education to facilitate their integration into the host country’s national educational system. In addition, the project built the capacities of refugee communities to empower them to contribute to the transition process of handover of secondary schools to Chadian authorities. To provide a quality secondary education to refugee youth across camps in Eastern Chad, and to increase the capacity of local educational structures for eventual handover of camp secondary schools to Chadian authorities.
RET worked with Parent-Teacher Associations (APEs) and Girls’ Committees (each of RET’s secondary school has an established Girls’ Committee, which plays an important peer support role for female students) as well as the school directors to organize awareness-raising campaigns to inform and sensitize students and parents about registration. In addition, absences were followed up on and individual meetings with absentees upon their return to school were organized, so as to understand what factors lead to dropouts. A specific focus was put on young girls at risk of abandoning their education. On a regular basis, RET encouraged and facilitated discussion groups between teachers, students, school directors and community leaders to debate school management issues and education quality.
The training of the APEs and the Girls’ associations was also a key part of this project’s goal of progressively having the refugee communities take the lead in the promotion, supervision and management of key educational activities. In addition, the project supported the APEs to develop income generating activities, which are used to fund the schools.
This project implemented between August 2017 and August 2018, was funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM) and implemented by RET in Chad.
During the fiscal year 2017, RET implemented two projects in the six refugee camps of Treguine, Bredjing, Farchana, Gaga, Goz Amir and Djabal, as part of a long-standing program going back thirteen years. RET’s expertise, accumulated over more than a decade of presence in eastern Chad, has enabled critical interaction with refugee learners providing key insights into the nature of their needs and the gaps in existing interventions benefiting Darfur refugees. During most of the fiscal year 2017 RET finalized the “Protecting Displaced Youth XII – Targeting Sudanese Refugees, and Chadian host community through meaningful and relevant education, capacity building and livelihoods initiatives” project which focused on providing formal secondary education as well as French, literacy and numeracy for refugee youth, while building capacities of host community secondary schools in view of the eventual handover of camp schools to Chadian authorities.
RET worked with Parent-Teacher Associations (APEs) and Girls’ Committees (each of RET’s secondary school has an established Girls’ Committee, which plays an important peer support role for female students) as well as the school directors to organize awareness-raising campaigns to inform and sensitize students and parents about registration. In addition, absences were followed up on and individual meetings with absentees upon their return to school were organized, so as to understand what factors lead to dropouts. A specific focus was put on young girls at risk of abandoning their education.
On a regular basis, RET encouraged and facilitated discussion groups between teachers, students, school directors and community leaders to debate school management issues and education quality. The training of the APEs and the Girls’ associations was also a key part of this project’s goal of progressively having the refugee communities take the lead in the promotion, supervision and management of key educational activities. In addition, the project supported the APEs to develop income generating activities, which are used to fund the schools. Finally, French classes continued to be provided to RET students and the wider refugee community, to facilitate the integration of refugees into the Chadian community. Life skills training, more specifically literacy and numeracy, continued as in previous years to be offered to the wider refugee community, as they are activities to which many women register.
This project implemented respectively from September 2016 to August 2017 and August 2017 to August 2018 (planned), was funded by theU.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM)and implemented by RET in Chad.