Sahel (MNN) — The Sahel region of western-central Africa has seen eight military coups in the last three years, creating mass displacement and refugees.
David Durance with TeachBeyond says, “Our concern is for this next generation. How is this next generation going to be raised? And is this going to be now a long-lasting place of instability?”
Schooling across the Sahel in particular has taken a hit with widespread unrest, and it’s kids who pay the price.
(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond)
Durance says, “The unknown part of this is just how long this would take to resume services and bring some sort of normalcy. As we’ve seen elsewhere, it can stretch from all being one week to now weeks to months, and then kids will have missed a whole year of education. And how do we pick up after that? It’s always a huge challenge.
“I think that’s the big difference between natural disasters where you can quite quickly say, ‘All right, in a month, we’re going to be able to resume.’ When you have a coup, when you have uprisings, when you have unrest, we just don’t know.”
When they’re out of school, children are susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups and traffickers.
TeachBeyond supports displaced children wherever they can across the Sahel with Gospel-based education.
“The second is looking at working with these kids that have come out of these environments and recognizing that sticking them inside a regular classroom with regular teaching is not going to be effective. We need to deal with the issues that have happened – so thinking through trauma-informed education.”
Pray for these kids to learn to love God with all their minds and hearts! And pray also for stability and wise, godly leaders in the Sahel region.
Header photo courtesy of TeachBeyond.
