Blog by Chiara Ronca, Education Officer at Plan International Ireland – a member of INEW
“If it was easy, we wouldn’t be there,” is what one of my mentors used to tell me whenever I was feeling particularly discouraged after a day of work when I had to deal with an overwhelming problem. I work as Education Officer for Plan International Ireland, an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. What my mentor meant was that we are not working in the countries where we are for the fun of it or because it is easy. The fact that it is challenging means it is all the more needed.
It is a mantra I find myself regularly repeating during tough days, no more than during this most recent period, when humanitarian aid has been drastically cut by the US and other governments.
How are we going to keep doing what we do with less resources? How can we ensure the best use of resources while maximizing the impact of our actions, despite the ongoing cuts? How can we better advocate for those out-of-school children in need of education to still receive the support they need?
My thoughts are primarily focused on some of the countries in which Plan International Ireland works: Burkina Faso, where schools are under attack and more than 5,000 schools were forced to close due to intercommunal conflict and violence from non-state armed groups (UNESCO); Cameroon, where flooding disrupted education in the Far North for several months last year; and Egypt, where the dire predicament for refugee children means they don’t have access to education.
Most of these countries show signs of “forgotten crises” – crises that the EU’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) department defines as “a severe, protracted humanitarian crisis where people receive insufficient or no international aid, forgotten by international media and donors, leading to a lack of funding and efforts to resolve their situation”.
Working in the development and humanitarian contexts is not easy. For example, in the Central African Republic (CAR) the challenges are manifold. The heatwaves are hard to endure during the dry season, roads practically impossible to use during the rainy season, not to mention the volatile context, where mines, armed clashes involving non-state armed groups, and other security threats create significant risks. But even in such difficult conditions, people live there and their children have eyes full of hope, their smiles revealing all the attributes of life and vitality.
Last month, myself and another colleague from Plan International Ireland travelled to CAR. After a 12 hour flight to Bangui, and another two internal flights, my colleague and I arrived in Paoua, in the North West of CAR. It then took over an hour to drive 10km, to arrive in a community where, under a grant funded by UNICEF and managed by Plan, a school is under construction. We met the school principals, teachers and students Plan International is working with.
“Works are advancing well,” our colleague Prosper informed us. “The contractors respected the construction standards. Look at this, it is 10 centimeters,” he said. He’s a great Education Specialist and apparently almost an engineer, too!
Plan staff monitors progress of school building in Betheon.
We moved onto a second school, another 20 minutes away by car, where we observed the type of classroom children attend in this community – made purely of wood and paille (a type of straw). It was immediately apparent to me why Plan International works in this community and I recalled: “If it was easy, we wouldn’t be there”.
In communities such the ones we visited in CAR, far from the urban areas and where the education system has been disrupted by many years of crisis, no International NGO is currently implementing education projects, apart from Plan International. If Plan wasn’t there, children would continue going to school in ‘classrooms’ made of straw prone to collapse with the first heavy rain.
What would happen to them during the rainy season? Children would just not be able to continue learning, they would lose precious time in education and the result would be many children not being able to read and write. And for many of them, losing time in schools increases the probability of never getting back.
A classroom in Motmboko village.
In CAR, the education system is characterised by a large number of out-of-school children, with approximately 338,000 out of the estimated 881,000 primary school-age children (ages 6–11) currently not in school (World Bank 2024). Plan International provides education in emergency intervention in CAR, building school infrastructures where there are none, facilitating out-of-school children to participate in an Accelerated Education Program (AEP) which allows them to recover education loss, before transitioning back into the formal system.
At Plan, we consistently focus on girls’ rights to access education, particularly in countries like CAR. Why? Because girls face significant barriers to access education compared to boys. According to the MICS 2021, 26% of women were married before the age of 15 and only 17% of those women are literate. And if the mothers weren’t able to attend school, they may not see a reason for their girls to attend school, and the circle of exclusion, illiteracy and poverty can’t be broken, and things can’t change.
International NGOs do what they do to bring a small contribution for this change. This is what we do and how we use funds that are given to us.
As part of my work, along with many other colleagues working in the aid sector, when working for Plan International Ireland, I visit countries to monitor whether the funding has been spent as intended and projects are following standards alignment and quality delivery.
Donors trust organisations like Plan International because we aim to reach as many as children as possible. We strive to select and adopt the best approach for girls to have access to education and not be prematurely married off or have unintended pregnancies, which will hamper their educational journey. We have strong relationships with different stakeholders and local partners, with school principals and teachers, even with children and adolescents. We care about the quality of our implementation and ultimately, we care about children’s learning.
My visits also incorporate supporting my Plan International CAR colleagues, whose challenges, logistical, financial and security wise, I was only barely able to witness and understand for the limited period I was there. They reported challenges ranging from dealing with intercommunal conflict driving population displacement affecting the education programs to the need for regular and costly vehicle repairs due to the bad road conditions. Not to mention that the full impact of recent aid cuts on projects in CAR remains uncertain, and it’s too soon to predict the full repercussions.
But one thing is clear: As the UNESCO report “The price of Inaction” outlines, there are huge cost implications for all economies around the world when children and youth leave school early and have less than basic skills. And globally, girls remain less likely than boys to enter school in the first place, still facing the highest rates of exclusion, according to the report.
Investing less in education, whether in emergencies or long-term development, means everyone loses. Yes, it’s complex, and there are challenges. But it is true for each and every one of us working in the aid sector: “If it was easy, we wouldn’t be there.” Education urgently needs funding—because the cost of not investing is far too high.
Plan International Ireland is a member of the Irish Network for Education Worldwide (INEW). A heartfelt thank you to Chiara Ronca and everybody at Plan for this kind contribution to our blog!
INEW advocates to achieve inclusive, equitable, and safe quality education for all worldwide, committed to reaching the furthest behind. Many of our members deliver impactful education projects across the world funded by aid and our members are devoted to global solidarity. We will continue to monitor the situation and identify the best course of action and we’d love to hear from you. If your organisation is interested in sharing its experiences on our blog, please reach out to us at [email protected]. We are also still running a survey to learn from our members about the impact on their education work: access survey here.
