United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Project location: Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (NWFP)
Project start and end dates: 1996- August 2016
Project schedule
- Operation of the 129 schools
- Adjust and depute the number of teachers on need basis to maintain qualitative outputs
- Promote multi-grade teaching of teachers
- Recollect at least 50% of useable books and distribute amongst students as needed
- Employ all watchmen through community funds
- Pro-actively involve the SMCs, enabling them to facilitate the goals and objectives of the sub-project under the Global Strategic Objectives (GSOs) of UNHCR
- Provide teaching and learning material
Project description
BEFARe has been implementing basic educational sub-projects in conflict affected areas of Pukhtoonkhwa since 1990. More than a million students have been educated through BEFARe schools alone in the last twenty years. The students have been supported with free education, books and stationary which is part of assistance package by donors and the partners.
BEFARe is implementing the Community Oriented Primary Education, (COPE) sub-project supported by UNHCR since 1996. The COPE, sub-project has been recognized as largest refugee education project worldwide, whereby around 59,000 students (from Grade-1-to-8) yearly are provided educational services. Presently 129 COPE schools are spread all over the Pukhtoonkhwa Province that also include the conflict areas of Malakand Division and Bannu; the services are managed through five sub-offices throughout the province BEFARe coordinates this program through its sub-offices in five districts of the province i.e. Abbottabad, Kohat, Mardan, Peshawar and Timergara.
BEFARe has been supporting its target communities in education, training, vocational skills training and community development in various spheres. This has been achieved through social mobilization, where the community organizations are formed at grass-root level and its members are trained by the BEFARe community participation staff to support the development processes at that level. In this context, more than 300 community organizations have been trained, and are active in local development. The trainings are based on building participants capacities in community mobilization for supporting endeavors in education, health, immunization, sanitation, and school infrastructure. After training, members of community organization are able to proactively participate and involve respective communities for local development initiatives. With communication channels working both ways, community groups serve as eyes and years of the management. The information is channeled from community through these groups and with help of an efficient M&E system, to the management team meeting on regular basis. Currently 129 school management committees are working with the project team and contributing indigenous resources for the betterment of service delivery.
Besides formal education the project has provided numerous trainings for generating livelihood opportunities benefiting a large number of individuals only last year COPE VET program benefited 195 individuals and has over the years directly helped 5,195 of the most underserved and poor families to sustain their livelihood. The program has also supported more than 80,000 females for MCH program and 74,000 adult literacy participants, besides training 4,000 teachers in formal and non-formal education apart from the regular 900 teaching staff that is provided free teacher trainings.
BEFARe since 1996 is continuously organizing ceremonies to observe World Days including tree plantation campaigns to improve the environment of target area and its surrounding vicinity. The practice has instilled understanding about the importance of environment among the communities. BEFARe has also assigned adequate number of SMCs to refugee females for registration of their voices and concerns regarding welfare of their children and improvement of administration. BEFARe currently has 38 Female SMCs with 508 female Afghans as its members. The SMCs are regularly trained in different aspects of school management and are encouraged and capacitated to not only understand the mechanism of school operations but also to gradually assume responsibilities.
