My name is Oumou, and I am 21 years old. I dropped out of school after getting my BEPC [First Cycle Education Certificate]. I was an apprentice in tailoring. The trainings I took are sewing, entrepreneurship and life skills. We learned how to manage our work to be successful.
I would like to say thank you to UNESCO and its partners. I also thank the trainers, the head of the centre and all those who contributed to this training. May God bless you all!
Testimony of a graduate of the training in tailoring in Dori
I am Koardiari. I am an internally displaced person from a village located 50 km from the town of Fada. I dropped out of school in Grade 3 because our school was burned down by unidentified armed men. I took training in plumbing. I learned many things during these trainings, such as installation and repair of pipes and sanitary evacuations. I also learned how to create, manage, and develop my business. I must be able to set up my own business because my life depends on it.
Oumou and Koardiari are two of 150 young people aged 18 to 24, including 108 young women, who were trained in two apprenticeship centres (ANFP –National Agency of Professional Training - and CPAVI - Village Poultry Promotion Centre), located in the Eastern and Sahel regions of Burkina. This 20-day accelerated training equipped them with one of four professional skills of their choice - sewing, building electricity/solar energy, sanitary plumbing and animal husbandry. At the end of the training, they were all provided with installation kits to facilitate their professional integration in Fada and Dori. Today, the beneficiaries work with companies or on their own.
David, 22 years old, is a young man trained in electricity and plumbing in Fada N'gourma. Today, he works in Fada, a town that has been hit hard by insecurity. Since his training, various companies and organizations, such as Doctors without Borders, have used his services. He also helps relatives and friends who call him with their plumbing installations. Married with one child, David is a very happy man, and so is his family.
David was able to enter the local job market quickly despite the competition.
In addition to building their vocational skills in income-generating occupations, the training aimed to develop their resilience in the face of rhetoric that advocates the use of hate or violence. Besides being able to support themselves, these young people have become aware of their role as ambassadors for peace and are working to contribute to the stability of their communities. For example, David highlights what he has learned to ensure a good living for the agents of the organizations he works for.
Also, we were taught how to live healthy in society to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. We were also taught how to live in peace by respecting our differences and seeking to reason out our point of view while respecting the symbols of the state.
The PVE-E training allowed me to change my way of seeing life, to change my behavior towards my family and friends. It has even allowed me to change my way of thinking. I know how to take care of myself and take responsibility in my daily life.
Several stages of preparation preceded these trainings. Firstly, a reference framework - which normally lasts at least six months - adapted to emergency situations was developed to correspond to a 20-day training. Four technical training programs in sewing, plumbing, animal husbandry, and solar energy/electricity building were developed, as well as three cross-cutting training programmes for technical and vocational education and training (TVET): entrepreneurship, life skills, and prevention of violent extremism through education. Finally, 10 TVET trainers were equipped with training methodology based on the competency approach and a transformative approach.
These trainings and the preparatory stages are part of the project “Support for social stability through education and vocational training of out-of-school youth following the security and health crises in the Sahel and in the eastern regions of Burkina Faso”. Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, it was implemented by UNESCO between March 2021 and July 2022, in close cooperation with the Ministry of National Education and Promotion of Languages and the Ministry of Sports, Youth and Employment.
This project is a response to the alarming security situation Burkina Faso has faced since 2015. The first internally displaced persons (IDPs), due to insecurity, have been recorded first in the Soum and Loroum provinces. According to the October 2022 OCHA report, more than 1.5 million displaced persons are registered, and 708,341 students are affected by the closure of 4,258 schools. Poverty, insecurity, and lack of employment are driving disaffected youth to join armed groups.
In addition to building the vocational skills of youth, the project also aimed to integrate Prevention of Violent Extremism through Education (PVE-E) into bridging centres in the Eastern Region and promote the integration of students from these centres into the formal education system.
The first step was to include the PVE-E in the curriculum and in the civic and moral education guide of the bridging centres. This was followed by the identification of 21 beneficiary bridging centres in the Eastern region and the training of 55 actors (facilitators, supervisors, coordinators, focal points, Permanent Secretary of the Accelerated Schooling Strategy/Bridging Centres (SP-SSA/P) personnel) on the content of PVE-E and on transformational pedagogy.
In total, more than 522 children between the ages of 7 and 15 from the centers were supported by the project in 2022 as part of the Accelerated Schooling Strategy/Bridging Centres (SSA/P). Through the PVE-E, their resilience skills in the face of hatred or the use of violence have been strengthened. They also each received a school kit consisting of a school bag and school supplies, as specified by the Ministry of Education.
Mr. Tambaga, a supervisor at the NGO Tin Tua, participated in the 3-day training organized in Fada with the SSA/P centre facilitators. This training concerned the roles of the participants in taking into account issues related to the prevention of violent extremism in pedagogy; it also concerned the consideration of themes such as tolerance, responsibility, mutual respect, solidarity, etc. At the end of this training, the facilitators have better shared the training modules related to the Civic and Moral Education course (ECM). According to Mr. Tambaga, these courses have brought a lot of change in classes and even in families. Many students who were internally displaced had arrived with trauma.
This PVE-E training allowed these students to transcend their fear and develop personal initiatives for conflict resolution. Although this project has been very successful, it would be ideal to extend it to other centres, to continue the ongoing training through refresher sessions for the facilitators, and to think about taking care of the facilitators and the school canteen for the learners.
All of these results (see video of project testimonials) constitute the project's contribution to social stability issues in the two project target areas of Fada and Dori. This implementation has been able to effectively address existential issues by not only allowing youth to learn new professional skills, but also to be able to hire other youth for the happiness of society. The support of the bridging centres also allows the children to get away from the issues of extremism in their hard-hit locality of the East. Stakeholders expressed their satisfaction with the positive results and their desire to expand the project to a larger scale in the country.