Integrated education and child protection project to enhance inclusive education, improved learning quality and strengthening Community based child protection in Rubkona. Mercy Corps Integrated Education and Protection Project aims to address the urgent and immediate needs of 8985 learners (6047 males and 2938 female), 319 teachers (278 male, 41 female) and 60 school management committees across ten schools in Rubkona county. The project seeks to increase access to quality education, and to increase child protection services for host community members, IDPs and returnees in Rubkona county. 
The proposed program will seek to achieve the following outcomes: 
Outcome 1: Out-of-school IDP and host community children, adolescents/youth aged 3-18
years have equitable access to safe and protective learning opportunities.

Proposed activities: 
- Rehabilitation of learning centers: Mercy Corps (MC) will undertake minor rehabilitation of 17 existing classrooms in eight schools and establish two new Temporary Learning Shelters (TLS) with their sanitation facilities. The project will also rehabilitate existing sanitation facilities in schools that are achieving INEE standards. In support of this effort MC will:
 Conduct community engagement and ‘back to learning’ campaigns to increase enrollment. 
 Provision of teaching and learning materials: MC will distribute teaching and learning Materials (TLM) for schools outside the PoC. Mercy Corps will provide students with TLM, in order to improve quality of education, enrolment in schools, school attendance and retention.
 Capacity strengthening for teachers. The capacity strengthening will include teachers training including PSS from CP technical team. 
 School management committees: MC will train 60 community school management committees to strengthen management of the education system. Mismanagement of the current schools has led to poor learning standards. 

Outcome 2: Improved recovery and resilience capacity among children by linking education with child protection services and psychosocial support to children and adolescents/youth aged 3-18 years including survivors of gender-based violence.
Proposed activities: 
Mercy Corps will integrate child protection (CP) interventions into education in schools and the wider community. This approach will strengthen Community Based Protection Mechanisms (CBPM) and facilitate improved access to information and provision of appropriate child protection services. In support of this, Mercy Corps will:
 Provide quality age and gender-appropriate focused and non-focused psychosocial support (PSS), as well as comprehensive case management services to children and adolescents in need of safe spaces
 Strengthen the skills of adolescents to be able to seek healthy livelihoods and income-generating opportunities.
 Strengthen community-based mechanisms to prevent and respond to violence against children and adolescents and help build a protective, enabling, inclusive and peaceful environment for them.
 Empower and enhance the safety and well-being of specifically vulnerable girls through gender-based violence (GBV) risk mitigation and prevention activities.
 Child Protection Committee (CPC): MC will establish 10 community child protection committees, one per target village, to facilitate the identification and response to child protection concerns and ongoing monitoring and reporting of CP concerns. Establishing CPCs includes training, mapping of services, setting up referral pathways and identifying focal points within each community and school.
 Awareness campaigns will include messages on the prevention of GBV, prevention of family separation, child recruitment and other protection concerns for teachers, community member’s committees. Mercy Corps will also establish child friendly spaces - CFSs in target schools and train teachers on child protection and psycho-social support and enable them to be able to identify and refer cases of children in need of protection.
- Provide capacity building training facilitators and teachers on(PSEA) and ( PFA) and Strengthened GBV referral pathways.