Bangkok--Jan 21--plan-international.
Plan Indonesia is the NGO representative on a task force working with the Indonesian Government to co-ordinate and facilitate educational provision for children in the Aceh province.
A team from Plan are in Banda Aceh this week meeting with the provincial government and other organisations concerned with educational provision. They conducted a fact finding exercise in some of the camps where they found volunteers, many of them students, trying to introduce some informal education. One volunteer from the Masjid Al-Faizin Camp told us that the children really needed things to do “education is the key to helping children today and looking to their future and the future of Aceh itself.”
Plan’s Regional Educational Advisor Hoa Phuong Tran and Plan Indonesia’s Education team, Sudiyo and Edi, are currently working with Islamic Relief to provide funding for an Emergency Primary Education Project and an Early Childhood Care and Development Project. “Children are missing out on any opportunity to socialize and need help urgently to get over the terrible trauma they have experienced, many of the surviving adults are too traumatised themselves to give the children the support they need”- said Hoa.
Islamic Relief will provide volunteers for the emergency programmes and work with Plan on training and getting the schools up and running. Islamic Relief’s representative in Indonesia Mr. Ede Surya Darmawan said “we are very pleased to be working with Plan on these projects, it is important that all agencies work together for the benefit of children in Aceh”
Pictures: Children from Masjid Al-Faizin Camp, child concentrating on a book.
Please click www.thaipr.net for Photo Release End.