Father accepts to send children to school

In the rural parts of South Sudan, many children have been deprived of an education by their parents simply because of negative socio-cultural beliefs.

Girls’ Education South Sudan’s (GESS) community mobilisation activities are helping to create an enabling social-cultural environment for supporting the education of the most marginalised children, including girls and children with disabilities. These activities target hard-to-reach and media dark school communities through outreach activities, led by GESS’ Community Mobilisation Volunteers.

Community Mobilisation Volunteers are individuals that hail from the communities in which they work, which fosters trust and full engagement. Having full knowledge of the area and people, the Community Mobilisation Volunteer in Jur River North, James, conducted a community dialogue on the importance of fast enrolment for the Academic Year 2023/2024, focusing on parents and guardians who had refused to send their children to school. After having several serious discussions with community members on the importance and value of education for all children, many participants decided to enrol their children.

“I am a father of nine children from two wives. I know that children are born to do cultivation and hunting. Sending (them) to school is a great (financial) loss for my family.”  Uyu and his family live a mere 200 metres from Majai Primary School, but for many years he refused to send his children to school.

Fellow villagers, friends and chiefs made several attempts to encourage Uyu to allow his nine children to enrol in the nearby school, but all the attempts were in vain.

When COVID-19 safety guidelines on physical distancing were put in place, the GESS programme adapted community dialogues into family listening groups. Family listening groups allow family members to sit together in a safe environment to listen to pre-recorded ‘Our School’ radio programmes. Family listening groups were found to be remarkably effective and have continued, despite the removal of physical distancing measures.

As community mobilisation activities were due to begin in Jur River North County, the chief and Payam Education Supervisor approached James to explain Uyu’s resistance towards education.

With this knowledge at hand, James decided that Uyu and his family would be the first to receive a solar-powered and wind-up radio from the GESS programme. The family had the opportunity to listen to ‘Our School’ episodes in Arabic over the space of two weeks. Andrea, GESS Team Leader in Western Bahr el Ghazal State told us that the family listened to “programmes like ‘the benefits of education,’ ‘budgeting for education’ and ‘role models’ as they are part of the programmes loaded on the SD cards given to communities.”

On the fifth day, the family was invited for a community dialogue discussion and feedback session to discuss the content of the radio programmes and to draw up action points.

During the discussion, Uyu said, “I committed a big mistake of preventing my children to go to school. From today onwards, I agree to send (all of) my children to school. I am ever ready to allow my wives, too, if they so wish,” Uyu added.

GESS’ community mobilisation activities are an important part of the programme’s behaviour change communication strategy that supports communities to change their negative attitudes and behaviours towards education and adopt new and positive ideas that support the development of their communities.

Western Bahr el Ghazal State is currently implementing community mobilisation activities in more than twenty school communities, focusing on rural areas in Wau, Raja and Jur River counties. More than 10,000 families have been reached so far.

For more information on GESS’ behaviour change activities, go here. Behaviour Change Communication : Girls’ Education South Sudan (girlseducationsouthsudan.org)

To listen to a selection of GESS’ radio programmes, go here. https://girlseducationsouthsudan.org/resources/radio-programmes/

Categorised in: Human Interest Story, Social & Behavioural Change Communication