The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Gulf charity Dubai Cares have launched a new education initiative to help bolster access to education for children and promote gender equality in the small East African nation of Djibouti.
Under the new partnership, UNICEF will use almost $1.9 million in funds donated by Dubai Cares to build new schools and rehabilitate existing ones, as well as to spur school enrolment through awareness raising. In Djibouti, around 126,000 children are going to the primary school, but tens of thousands of them are not enrolled and more than half of these are girls. The new education will help to improve the quality of primary education and close the gender gap between boys and girls. The programme will also help Djibouti in its efforts to reach the anti-poverty targets to be reached by the year 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly those related to education. UNICEF will also seek to improve the quality of education through teacher training, reduce dropout rates and develop a national strategy on non-formal education.
