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By Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps - USA
http://www.mercycorps.org
June 26 2003

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"The walls may need painting and the chairs may be broken, but at least the children are back in school now," says Zainab Rauf Hassan, a teacher at Al-Areesh Al-Ibtidaayia primary school in Wassit province, Iraq.

Most of the schools in Iraq were closed during the war. After the war, the looting and ongoing insecurity forced schools to remain closed. Finally, in May they began to reopen but the schools in the rural areas of Wassit province faced a critical obstacle. The majority of the teachers live in Kut City and had relied on transportation services from the Department of Education to go out to the villages to work each day.

The buses the Department of Education had used before the war had been looted and vandalized and there was no money available to provide transportation. So, while the schools in the cities had resumed classes and were preparing for year-end examinations, the children in the villages waited anxiously.

"The situation was really critical," says Tom O'Malley, an Emergency Program Officer for Mercy Corps in Iraq. "If the rural schools were not reopened quickly, the kids would miss the year-end examinations and not be able to progress to the next level in the fall."

In addition to taking examinations, it was top-priority to get children back to class for their psychological well being as well as physical security. While schools were closed, children spent their days roaming the streets and fields that are littered with landmines and unexploded ordinances (UXOs).

"We needed to give the children a sense of routine, that things were returning to normal after such a stressful period," says Mr. Ali Al Harghani, head of the Wassit Education Department.

Mercy Corps, who has been working in Wassit province since the end of the war, was able to provide assistance immediately and enable 215 schools in the rural areas of the province to reopen. Using funds from private donors, Mercy Corps oversaw and financed the transportation services for over 430 teachers living in Kut out to the rural schools.

"Because we had funds from private donors we were able to respond to the situation immediately," noted O'Malley. "Unlike other programs financed through large institutional grants that require extensive paperwork and time-consuming approval processes, private funds allowed us to act quickly. We were able to put the program in place and start busing teachers to schools within a few days of learning of the problem."

Now, over 250,000 students in the rural areas of Wassit are back in class and starting their year-end examinations.

Ebtisam Ghazi, a sixth grader at Al-Areesh Al-Ibtidaayia school, is anxious about her exams but happy to be back in class. "I am nervous about my English exam, but it is much better than worrying about the war."

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Direct Link:
--http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/105664145085.htm

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