Improving Access to lifesaving and Sustaining Education and Child Protection Services to Flood Affected Children(Boys and Girls) in Jowhar District, Middle Shabelle Region, Hirshabelle State of Somalia. This project is designed to respond to education and protection needs of children affected by floods in six rural villages of Jowhar District of Middle Shabelle in Hirshabelle State of Somali. The villages have either been affected by floods due to River Shabelle breaking its banks and flooding the settlements and farm lands in the riverine areas or floods sweeping the villages as result of heavy rains experienced in the region since early May 2018.

Education facilities in the villages are closed since most of them were affected either flash floods or river bank breakage that saw them completely inundated or marooned by water. 
The villages are generally food insecure as the population are faced with acute unemployment, prohibitive cost of living, and lack of skill sets by majority of the dwellers to eke meaningful living. The situation is further exacerbated by cyclic droughts and flash floods that are making agro-pastoralism lifestyle untenable and thus many are dropping out to join ever increasing population of vulnerable persons in the riverine regions. The worst affected are children and women who often bear the brunt of neglect and abandonment during these hard times. This often makes them susceptible to abuse and exploitation such as Gender Based Violence, sexual exploitation, early marriages, child labor and recruitment to armed groups. 

The project intends to use school attendance as important preventive factor for child protection, particularly the girl-child. The project will employ such interventions as payment of teachers incentives, training of teachers on child-friendly pedagogy, training of teachers on basic child protection skills, provision of child-friendly environment through improvement and repair of damaged temporary classrooms, provision of safe drinking water, one meal a day at the schools, establishment and capacity building Child-to-Child clubs to provide peer interaction forums to learners, provision of teaching and learning materials-including recreational materials, capacity building of Community Education Committees to ensure sustainability of the schools, provision of gender sensitive latrines to school that lack the same and desulging of those filled by the floods, conducting of Gender Based Violence awareness training for women groups in the villages and routine hygiene promotion to increase awareness on Acute Watery Diarrhea/Cholera which are prevalent during rainy and flood seasons. These interventions are envisaged to prevent exploitation such Gender Based Violence, sexual exploitation, early marriages, child labor and recruitment to armed groups. 

Further, project will provide solar lamps and dignity kits to vulnerable households worst affected by the floods with children in the schools to ensure they have descent clothing and a form of lighting in their homes to improve their protection. Particular attention will be given to female headed households, child-headed households and survivors of Gender Based Violence in the targeted villages.