Access for out of school Children to Education & Safe Schools (AcCESS)

The aim of the “Access for Out of School Children to Education and Safe Schools in Pakistan (AcCESS)” project is to improve access to quality education in emergencies, other situations of violence and early recovery phases.

The AcCESS project is being implemented in 13 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and aims to provide access to education for more than 195,000 children who do not attend school or are at risk of dropping out. With this objective, HOPE’87 together with partners (ESED, ESEF, NCHD, MaEF) is implementing a comprehensive programme for the enrolment of out-of-school children in the project districts. These include areas with no government school in close proximity, areas with schools having less enrolment and huge numbers of out-of-school children and areas with well-attended schools but still a sizeable number of out-of-school children. The project also aims to enrol and support young Afghan refugees in Pakistan through voucher schemes for technical training, advocacy and learning activities.

To this end, HOPE’87 trained 11,578 teachers (including 4,754 women) of ESED, 403 Girl Community School teachers (100% women) and 520 Feeder Teachers of NCHD (including 222 women). The training covered topics such as school sanitation and hygiene education and Standard Operating Procedures for the safe reopening of schools so that teachers expressed increased levels of confidence on how to follow and implement the general social distancing and WASH procedures. HOPE’87 further helped guide school teachers and parents to encourage students to make use of digital contents in order to enhance their knowledge and skills by attending online sessions on the Taleem Ghar TV channel. The objective of the tele school was to engage the students to continue their studies while staying safe at home through this distance-learning model.

Furthermore, HOPE’87 provided hand washing stations in 508 Community Schools so as of now, about 31,000 students are benefitting from the provision of hand washing stations. A comprehensive health screening exercise was conducted throughout the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where a total of 18,273 students in 430 Community Feeder Schools were screened through trained field staff. The purpose of this school health programme was to identify students with visual, hearing, dental, skin and personal hygiene problems and refer them to the nearest government hospitals or basic health units.