Sitting on a wooden bench in the front row of his grade 3 class and enthusiastically raising his hand to answer his teacher’s questions, 10-year-old Yazidu Sahabi demonstrates his passion for learning.

“You must study hard, and do it with all of your heart,” says Yazidu, who dreams of becoming a medical doctor.

Zaharau Abdullahi Yabo, Yazidu’s teacher, says he is the first to arrive to her classroom each morning and the reading and writing skills he is receiving at school will put him on a path to success.

“If a student doesn’t get a strong foundation in primary school, it is hard for him to achieve what he wants to become later in life,” explains Yabo.

Yazidu is one of nearly 200,000 young students in Sokoto improving reading and writing skills through an early grade reading program called Let’s Read! (Mu Karanta! in Hausa).

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Northern Education Initiative Plus project is being implemented in formal and non-formal schools in Nigeria’s Sokoto and Bauchi states, with the goal of improving reading skills for more than 2 million primary grade learners.

In partnership with more than 100 international and local curriculum developers, linguists, primary teachers and other educators, the project has developed student books and teacher guides for each of the three terms of the Nigerian school year.

The Mu Karanta! books equip grade 1 to 3 students to read in the local language of Hausa, and the Let’s Read! books prepare grade 2 to 3 students to transition from reading in Hausa to English.

Collectively, the books contain more than 750 lessons, each of them providing children with opportunities to practice reading, listening and writing. The illustrations and stories embedded in the books communicate local cultural norms and values. Additionally, the guiding questions that supplement each lesson encourage early grade readers to think critically.

Sparking excitement for learning

In Sokoto state, a hot and arid Savannah region in northwestern Nigeria that borders Niger, educating children in rural areas has been a challenge.

Farming families prioritize working in the fields over receiving an education, classrooms have suffered from insufficient textbooks and teachers are not adequately trained and mentored. With these education challenges, teachers and students are regularly absent from school.

Grade 3 teacher Yabo says despite these hurdles, perspectives are changing and a renewed excitement for learning is increasing in the remote communities. The Northern Education Initiative Plus has delivered more than 860,000 textbooks to students and teachers in nearly 900 primary schools in Sokoto state.

“Children are coming to school more than they did before because of the books distributed to them,” says Yabo, who has been teaching at Nizzamiyya Islamiyya Model Primary school for nine years and even attended the school as a child.

Before the Mu Karanta! books were delivered to school, Yabo says the teachers were using very old and outdated textbooks. However, the new learning and teaching materials are opening new avenues for students to receive a quality education.

“Even those that are not enrolled in school are drawn to these books and they ask their parents to bring them to school so they can get these books,” she explains.

In the second year of a five-year project, Northern Education Initiative Plus has distributed more than 1.9 million reading textbooks to students and teachers in Bauchi and Sokoto states, opening new doors for children in northern Nigeria to improve their basic literacy and math skills.

For 10-year-old Yazidu, the Mu Karanta! lessons are enhancing his motivation to learn in the classroom.

“When we learn Mu Karanta! my teacher teaches us new songs, she shows us papers with drawings of different objects and their names. We identify them together. She reads a story, asks us questions and we look in our books together,” he says.

For Abubakar Sahabi, Yazidu’s father, receiving a quality education is essential for his youngest son to reach his goals.

“When I watched him read I realized that the many hours he spent in school were worth the while. My decision to educate him is a good investment,” says Abubakar, who is a retired teacher and has 18 children.

After witnessing his son’s motivation to learn Hausa and English, Abubakar installed a chalkboard in their home kitchen to practice the Mu Karanta! lessons together as a family.

“Yazidu is performing better than his older brother who is grade 4 because of the program materials and instruction,” explains Abubakar. “He has taught his brother and even other secondary students what he is learning at school.”

Addressing a state of emergency together

Faruk Shehu, Executive Secretary for Sokoto State Universal Basic Education Board, says the education sector in northern Nigeria has been in desperate need of improvement and the Sokoto government is taking the initiative to rapidly overcome challenges.

“The Sokoto government has declared an educational state of emergency after sitting down and realizing the major issues in education in northern Nigeria,” explains Shehu.

About 80 percent of children in grades 2 and 3 in Bauchi and Sokoto states were not able to read a single word in Hausa or English, according to a 2016 Early Grade Reading baseline assessment conducted by the Northern Education Initiative Plus project.

With outdated instructional methods and inadequate training of teachers, learners do not have the support needed to succeed in the classroom.

Shehu says two main groups—the Policy Council on Education and Technical Committees—have been established to fast-track education activities related to the state of emergency. The committees include principals, teachers, school administrators, unions and international nongovernmental organizations, among others involved in the sector.

To Shehu, the partnership is evolving and changing and “everybody is coming together” to solve the primary challenges to education in Sokoto.

“A society without education is not fit to be a society,” says Shehu, who has been part of the education sector during his entire career. “If you look at it morally, economically and socially, education shapes the life of every individual.”

The Northern Education Initiative Plus program builds ownership among federal, state and Local Government Education Authorities and works closely with them to ensure commitment to quality early grade reading instruction and increased access to education.

Yusuf Alhassan Muhammad, Local Government Reading Coordinator for Northern Education Initiative Plus, says the local government, communities and parents have accepted the early grade reading program and Mu Karanta! educational materials through ongoing advocacy and open communication.

Frequent meetings with traditional and religious leaders, as well as parents and school administrators, influenced the key decision makers and the community embraced the new reading program.

Muhammed says the local government has shown ownership in the project by continually engaging the entire community and by covering the compensation for 115 government staff who received teacher training and eventually were placed in a primary school.

With an eye toward sustainability, the government also provided a vehicle to deliver the learning and teaching materials to 77 hard-to-reach, rural communities, says Muhammed.

Through the project, more than 9,000 educators have been equipped with practical skills to teach the early grade reading curriculum.

“The education system cannot be taken care of by individuals independent of the parents,” says Muhammed, who is responsible for the project’s reading activities in formal schools in Sokoto’s Tangaza local government. “Teachers are the parents at school and equally the parents are the teachers at home.”

Creative teaching, active learning

Yabo has experienced firsthand the challenges of teaching young learners with inadequate literacy curriculum and limited support. In her career as a teacher in Sokoto, she had not received in-service training.

Yabo says she lacked quality teaching and learning materials and had limited guidance on planning lessons. For instance, she would enter a classroom and teach her students for several hours without inviting them to actively participate in lessons.

“The trainings changed my whole perspective to teaching. I have teacher guides with properly structured lessons. I engage my pupils throughout the lesson. I hear their voices as much as they hear mine. It is team work,” says Yabo.

Yabo says that since her school has embraced the Northern Education Initiative Plus interventions, the culture of reading at Nizzamiyya Islamiyya Model Primary has improved and the new approach to learning and teaching is creating a more positive environment.

“Trained teachers are excited about teaching in class because they are finding creative ways to express themselves,” she explains. “Children want to come to school more because it is fun and parents love the textbooks.”

She also says that the stories in the Mu Karanta! textbooks have changed the behavior of children.

“Children have listened to and read the stories that teach good hygiene so children now take their bath and wear neat uniforms to school. There are stories that teach good morals and the value of education so children now understand that daily attendance in school is important,” she says.

Joy du Plessis, Senior Reading Specialist for Northern Education Initiative Plus, recognizes the importance of mother tongue language and story illustrations in textbooks play to improve literacy education for all children–especially living in remote northern Nigeria.

“We’ve seen how the community is very happy with the illustrations and how they represent the culture,” she says. “Before the materials were printed, we tested them in communities to make sure they were socially and culturally relevant and acceptable.”

The reading expert says the illustrations were designed to reflect strong, curious, lively and active girls and boys, especially girls, and the images show the children as being equal.

The illustrations and the stories encourage students like Yazidu to become critical thinkers and to question, predict, infer and analyze–important skills needed to succeed in school and eventually a thriving career.

“How do we know early grade students’ in Sokoto are improving their reading skills and enjoying learning new lessons?” asks du Plessis. “We see the accelerated student achievement in classrooms and a new excitement and embrace for education from parents and communities every single day.”

A live radio program on Vision FM is about to wrap up when a listener calls the station to affirm that parents, whether literate or illiterate, can support their children to become better readers.

From Sokoto state in Nigeria, the caller is echoing the message of the five-minute drama skit he had just listened to on the Let’s Read! (Mu Karanta! in Hausa) radio program which focused on the importance of literacy and education.

“I want the children in our community to learn how to read,” says another listener calling into the live show on the radio station Globe FM in Bauchi state. “This program should reach my local government too.”

The live radio program airing on multiple stations provides opportunities for listeners to call the show to ask questions, provide comments on the drama or discussion segment. Literacy experts are on hand to address issues that need clarification.

Part of the USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus project, the Let’s Read! radio programs are airing in Nigeria’s Sokoto and Bauchi states to encourage communities to create a culture of reading.

Implemented by Creative Associates International, the project is providing access to quality education and seeking to improve reading skills for more than two million school-aged children in formal and non-traditional schools.

Along with radio skits, the project is also reaching communities through mobile phones. While live programs, dramas and public service announcements are being aired on the radio, the project dispatches monthly voice messages on phones to targeted groups of literate and illiterate fathers, mothers, older siblings and community leaders to enlist their support for education.

The community members listen to the messages on their phones at night after the day’s activities and are able to opt out afterwards or refer the message to a friend or family member further promoting the campaigns.

Both radio and voice messages align with calendars for school and non-formal learning centers and focus on themes of enrollment, retention, transition and early grade reading.

Local messaging to mobilize community support 

James Statman, Chief of Party for the Northern Education Initiative Plus project, says seeing through a local cultural lens is essential for the media campaign’s success.

“The project researched how best to sell education to parents in a way that they learn of its benefits–not just for their children but also themselves,” explains Statman.

“We learned that even though many people agreed that education was good, they had to learn of its benefits in very practical terms like how educated children could help them on a daily basis as farmers, artisans, herdsmen or housewives,” he says.

Statman says the campaigns were derived locally from the community and created through collaboration with religious leaders, school representatives, government partners, women leaders and an expert team versed in behavior change communications from the African Radio Drama Association.

Engaging stories that resonate with communities 

The campaign’s popularity and success is due in part to the fact that community members can see themselves in the individuals they hear on the radio, explains Statman.

“We made sure we used characters that the communities of intervention could easily identify with like a butcher, a teacher with children, a community nurse or village head to speak about the benefits of education in a conversational and appealing manner,” he says.

One theme of the radio skit focuses on an illiterate mother who reaches out to another illiterate neighbor for help after her daughter persistently asks her to help with her homework.

The illiterate neighbor explains to the mother that she may not know how to read or write but there are a number of ways she could help her daughter read better. She tells her she could make the home conducive for reading, suggests asking her child about her day at school, encouraging the child to read to her aloud and teaching her cultural songs.

The mother teaches the other mother a song which they sing together and she leaves feeling more empowered to meet her daughter’s educational needs.

Reaching a wider audience

The live shows on radio are anchored by widely recognized presenters within the two Nigerian states and are promoted on the stations before airing so listeners can anticipate the program’s main topic for the day.

Zainab Gwani, a teacher from Darazo local government in Bauchi state is appearing as a guest on the program. This is her first time speaking on radio.

Gwani says children in school are getting all the support to learn to read with the Mu Karanta! early grade reading curriculum but it needs to be complemented with parental support.

“The radio program is a very good platform to reach parents to tell them why it is important to be more involved in their children’s schooling,” she says. “We would like to see them monitor teaching and learning in school, help them with their homework and get them ready for school.”

“I share this every day in school but now I can emphasize this message to thousands more,” says Gwani.

The Nigeria Education Crisis Response project has been named one of 10 winners of the prestigious, third-annual 2017 Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Case Competition.

Presented by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Learning Lab, the global competition honors real-life case studies of USAID staff and implementing partners for organizational learning and better development outcomes.

The USAID-funded Nigeria Education Crisis Response project is implemented by Creative Associates International, the International Rescue Committee, the Nigerian government and local non-governmental organizations.

Awarded for its use of multiple feedback loops to adapt programming in the volatile northeastern part of the country, the project focuses on expanding access to quality and relevant non-formal education opportunities for internally displaced and out-of-school children and youth ages 6 through 17.

“We’re honored that USAID recognized the Nigeria Education Crisis Response project’s innovative efforts to meet the needs of vulnerable, displaced children and youth,” says Earl Gast, Senior Vice President and Senior Director of the Education for Development and Economic Growth Divisions at Creative.

“Applying real, collaborative and strategic solutions to development challenges is critical in any context, but even more so in a volatile environment like northeastern Nigeria,” he adds.

The regular feedback has been critical to ensuring timely evidence-based adaptations in education in conflict programming and stronger collaboration among everyone involved in the initiative, from the community level to the state government.

Ayo Oladini, Chief of Party, credits the success of the Nigeria Education Crisis Response project to the collaboration among USAID, communities, parents, partners and the staff.

“By integrating feedback loops through the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approach, we are forming trusted relationships and empowering all key decision makers to have complete ownership of the project,” says Oladini.

The project was selected out of 100 case studies for its leveraging of USAID’s Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approach, a set of practices that help improve development effectiveness.

Improving responsiveness to beneficiaries

Leveraging the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approach to improve programmatic success, the Nigeria Education Crisis Response project has mobilized and trained nearly four dozen non-governmental organizations to establish more than 900 non-formal learning centers for children displaced by the violence.

Feedback loops enable the project team to learn what practices are effective with these displaced learners and how the community is responding.

“The Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approach is powerful tool that helped the Nigeria Education Crisis Response project become more responsive to beneficiaries,” says Oladini.

In close and ongoing collaboration between the Nigerian government, project staff, civil society and local communities, the project has reached more than 88,000 internally displaced out-of-school children with basic literacy and numeracy skills and wraparound services like Social Emotional Learning support. It is active in five Nigeria states: Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe and Yobe.

Through the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approach, the Nigeria Education Crisis Response has succeeded in mobilizing community coalitions to troubleshoot local implementation challenges and improve the quality, delivery and inclusiveness of the non-formal education model.

The Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Case Competition winners will be honored at a USAID Learning Lab reception in Washington, D.C., on October 19.

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Thousands of out-of-school Nigerian children readied for formal school

By Boco Edet Abdul

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Meet Hadiza Hamza, one of these students who transitioned to the classroom

SOKOTO – Until recently, Hadiza Hamza was one among the millions of children not attending school in northern Nigeria.

A resident of the Malamawa community in Nigeria’s Sokoto state with limited access to formal education, Hamza and her six siblings attended Qur’anic schools and assisted their parents during the farming seasons.

Now, she sits at the back of a fourth grade classroom at Malamawa Primary School, pointing at words in a passage and reading aloud with fellow students.

How did she get here?

Last year, Hamza enrolled in a basic literacy program in a community-based non-formal learning center, introduced by the USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus project. Implemented by Creative Associates International’s Instructional Systems team, the project is providing access to quality education and improving reading skills for more than two million school-aged children in formal and non-traditional schools.

“I wanted to be educated but I never had an opportunity till a center opened in our community,” Hamza says. “I could learn to read and write conveniently.”

To-date, the project has enrolled more than 36,000 children—who, like Hadiza Hamza, were once out-of-school— into 800 non-formal learning centers across educationally disadvantaged communities in Bauchi and Sokoto states.

In addition to reaching students ages 5 to 17 with quality education, the project also trains educated community members as learning facilitators to teach literacy, numeracy and life skills in Hausa, the mother tongue language spoken in Sokoto and Bauchi, and help students transition to English.

Mohammed Yusuf Gama, Access & Fragility Officer Sokoto state, coordinates all the access and fragility activities for the Northern Education Initiative Plus project and helps build capacity for 10 local government access and fragility coordinators and NGOs to establish non-formal learning centers.

 “Our non-formal learning centers introduce education to most out-of-school children and after completing our basic literacy program facilitates their entry to formal schools,” says Gama.   

Hadiza’s journey to quality education and formal schooling

During the six-month program, children like Hamza attend classes for a minimum of six hours every week. They receive textbooks developed by the USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus project as well as writing materials to aid their learning.

When a non-formal learning center opened in her small community, Hamza asked her father, who is an Islamic Cleric, to enroll her.

“I enjoyed attending classes,” she says. “I loved my books. I liked the pictures, especially the airplane. I know one day I will travel in it when I become a teacher.”

Hamza is making progress toward her dream. In March 2017, she wrote and passed an exit examination certifying she had completed the basic literacy program, which meant she could continue her studies in fourth grade at a nearby formal school.

The exam was conducted by the regulatory body for non-formal education in Bauchi and Sokoto states, the State Agency for Mass Education.

Almost 90 percent of 31,631 children tested on literacy, numeracy and life skills subjects taught during the basic literacy program passed and qualified to be mainstreamed into formal schools.

Looking forward, the project has mobilized school authorities at formal schools in anticipation of the arrival of these new fourth grade students when classes begins in September. The Northern Education Initiative Plus project has also worked to build ownership and commitment of the quality basic education initiative among federal, state and local government.

Eager to continue learning after passing her exam, Hamza convinced her parents to allow her to start attending classes in fourth grade back in March before she formally enrolls in the new school year in September.

Her mother, Asmau Hazma, sees her daughter Hadiza as a role model for the family. She is eager to support her daughter’s dream of furthering her education.

“I am a very proud mother. Seeing how Hadiza can now read and write has made me realize the value of education,” she says.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Hundreds of thousands of children and youth have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency. As they try to move forward with their lives and education in host communities, the USAID-funded Nigeria Education Crisis Response project provides social emotional learning support to help them heal.

How to heal: In Boko Haram’s wake, social emotional learning helps displaced children

Can classrooms help students heal? Meet the learners, educators and government partners who are proving the power of social emotional learning to support students as they build new lives after escaping Boko Haram.

Read full story

Healing by the numbers

By providing social emotional learning support in the classroom, learning facilitators in northern Nigeria are creating a powerful learning environment that fosters the success of all children and youth.

Click the photos below to learn more about social emotional learning’s positive impact.

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7,100 Nigerian teachers learn how to support students – and themselves – after trauma

By Chima Onwe

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]BIU, Nigeria — More than 7,100 primary school teachers in Nigeria are returning to their classrooms better equipped to help their students – and themselves – succeed in the wake of the conflict by violent extremists.

In five Local Government Areas of the northeastern state of Borno, a total of 7,169 primary school teachers participated in four-day training sessions, aimed at giving them tools to more effectively reach their students.

The training covered topics on psychosocial counseling, trauma healing, creating a child-friendly learning environment and incorporating social and emotional learning into curricula.

In a region where countless children have been affected by Boko Haram, teachers need these tools to support their students both academically and emotionally.

“In my 10 years plus as a teacher, I have never attended such kind of training,” said Shehu Abdullahi, a teacher in the community of Biu. “I wouldn’t have been able to pay for this training – it cannot be quantified in monetary value. I am eager to go back and practice what I learned in the classroom.”

The trainings were conducted throughout May and June by Nigeria Education Crisis Response – a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with the International Rescue Committee and more than 40 Nigerian organizations.

The project aims to expand access to quality education for out-of-school and internally displaced children and youth 6 to 17 by establishing non-formal learning centers that offer accelerated education programs to put students back on a path to consistent school attendance. Across the five northeastern states where it operates, the project also provides support to formal schools.

The state of Borno is at the epicenter of the conflict with Boko Haram. Education institutions have been especially hard-hit. In coordination with the Borno government, the project set out to reach as many formal school teachers as possible with training to help the state rebuild its education systems.

“The training program is coming at the right time and will go a long way in assisting our efforts toward fixing the education sector in Borno state,” said Borno’s Deputy Governor Alhaji Usman Mamman Durkwa as the training began.

Teaching resilience to overcome trauma

Boko Haram has disrupted and displaced millions of people across the region, and its attacks frequently target schools.

In addition to students falling behind on studies due to displacement or closed schools, those returning to the classroom may have endured loss and emotional trauma that can negatively impact their ability to learn.

Using the project’s “Healing Classrooms” approach, the training instructed teachers on how to strengthen students’ sense of control, sense of belonging and safety, feelings of self-worth, relationships with peers and adults, and learning engagement to improve overall well-being.

It also focused on how to infuse social and emotional learning in lesson work – guiding students on how to manage emotions, set goals, show empathy for others and make responsible decisions.

“The teaching methodology we were exposed to in the four days of this training is the fastest way to bring our pupils to speed with the insurgency we have experienced,” said Biu teacher Habiba Audu. “I will apply what I have learned to assist the pupils regain what they have lost.”

The training also gave teachers a chance to reflect on their own needs – more than 300 Borno teachers have been killed by Boko Haram. A baseline study in Borno found that more than 93 percent of teachers experienced trauma and subsequent emotional issues. Many had also been forced out of work, some for years at a time.

A portion of the training was dedicated to allowing teachers to think about how their own well-being and behavior can affect their students.

“We are grateful to the USAID Education Crisis Response Project for not only introducing this training to improve the emotional well-being and pedagogical skills of many of our formal teachers, but also for bringing in many of our out-of-school children into the educational system through the non-formal approach and alternative educational opportunity,” said Waziri Umar Ngurno, Secretary of the Borno State Universal Basic Education Board.

Network of training

The effort to reach thousands of teachers started small: A 28-person group drawn from the project, the government and universities first came together to develop training manuals.

Fifteen national trainers approved the manuals, and from there developed a training guide.

The guide was used to instruct more than 100 “master trainers” on how to facilitate the larger trainings for primary school teachers. That group then led the four-day sessions in five different Local Government Areas: Biu, Jere, Kaga, Konduga and Maiduguri.

Veteran teachers said that such a training was a new experience for them – in its sheer size, organization, and content.

“This training is the first of its kind, it is one year’s training wrapped in four days,” said Mohammed Madu Galadima, a teacher in Biu. “I have learned teaching methods that I can apply to teach my pupils, especially those that are traumatized.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]