Children and parents in the Middle East don’t need to be convinced of the importance of education programming, even when regional unrest has driven people into their houses or to neighboring countries.
What draws students away from learning instead is the need for income and financial support in an economically crippled region.
“What we’re trying to do in addition to conditional cash transfers is peer-to-peer education,” Country Director for CARE International Salam Kanaan told Devex.
Kanaan said a lack of financial resources is the number one barrier to education in Jordan, which currently hosts more than 620,000 refugees, many of them children.
Roberta Contin, country director for Global Communities in Yemen, agrees. As the civil war in Yemen rages on, young Yemenis’ desire for education hasn’t diminished.
“They still want to go,” Contin told Devex. “And we are still operational, and the students call every day to say they want to go for the vocational training.”
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