Displaced Children's Learning Fund

Why this matters in Burkina Faso

Armed groups operating in Burkina Faso's north and east have targeted schools, threatened teachers and driven whole communities from their villages since the mid-2010s. At the end of February 2023, the education ministry counted 6,134 schools closed by insecurity, about a quarter of the total, affecting more than a million students. Some have reopened since, but closures shift with the fighting and many rural areas remain without functioning schools.

Displaced children usually arrive in towns such as Kaya, Dori or Ouahigouya, where schools are already overcrowded. Some families lack birth certificates or school records, which makes enrollment harder, and teachers who fled their posts are not always redeployed. Each month out of school raises the risk of child labor, early marriage and recruitment by armed groups. Temporary classrooms let children keep learning near where they now live, and catch-up teaching prepares them to rejoin the formal system at the right level.

What your gift pays for

• Tents or semi-permanent structures used as temporary classrooms near displacement sites
• Stipends and training for community teachers in emergency learning spaces
• School kits, textbooks and blackboards for children who fled without supplies
• Catch-up lessons that prepare children to re-enter state schools at the right grade