GIVING REFUGEE STUDENTS A HOPEFUL FUTURE
By: The Partnership, Psipse
Tags: Life Skills, Sdgs, Uganda, Refugees, Education

Shakira Elizabeth, a form 4 girl who plans to be a lawyer. Shakira is a refugee from Congo and is supported by CIYOTA.

Shakira Elizabeth never imagined that she would ever reach form 4.

“It is beyond anything I ever hoped for,” she said.

The 18-year-old student at Albert Secondary School in Hoima is a Congolese refugee who first arrived her when she was only two-years-old.

“When I ask my parents, they say we ran here [from their home in Goma] when the wars in Congo were taking place,” she said.

And although she still very much identifies as being Congolese, Shakira’s whole life has been spent at Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Western Uganda. With over 90,000 settlers, the expansive settlement’s size and limited resources make it difficult for young refugee children to receive basic resources like healthcare, food and water, and even a quality education.

“No matter where they are from, every refugee goes through the same thing when they arrive here,” said Nziyonvira Ntakamaze, the executive director of COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA), an organization born and nurtured within the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in 2005 to improve the lives of young people through functional education, socially responsible leadership and social entrepreneurship activities. Though a majority of the camp is made up of Congolese refugees, there are also people from South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, and Somalia.

“So before they come to our program, they do not have a hope to go to school,” he added. “And then they also don’t know that they they have the potential to change their own lives and help other people.”

The program he is speaking of is Unlocking Girls’ and Boys’ Potential in Conflict-Affected Areas, a secondary school project which brings 110 talented students from the settlement to good secondary schools in the area.

CIYOTA’s educational programming, which touches about 1,500 students today, includes nursery, primary, and secondary school as well as assisting secondary school graduates to transition to university.

For children in the camps, like Shakira, access to education is hard. For example, there are 8 primary schools in the camp. And when you consider that 60 percent of 90,000 settlers are school going children (ages 3–14), those numbers can easily overwhelm the already resource-poor schools. Only 22 percent of refugees have access to secondary school education.

“The number of those in school and those out of school in Kyangwali is almost equal. So for many, going to school is a dream because they don’t believe it is possible,” Ntakamaze said. “And for those in school, the quality of the education is not the best. You can go to school for three years and still don’t know how to read and write. So many students dropout of school because they are not seeing results.”

For Shakira, staying on course has been a challenge, but she continues to fight. As the oldest of six siblings, she wants to show them that they too can go far with education. She hopes to head to university in South Africa or the U.S. to study law.

“I study hard to be an example. If I drop out, [my siblings] will say we can drop out because our older sister dropped out,” she said. “So I have to really thank CIYOTA. They support me. I really appreciate what they do in my life.”