AWN INITIATIVE FOR PARALLEL EDUCATION

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Iraq, for 2022, shows "shocking" statistics: Iraq has ~ 5million orphans, representing about 5% of the total number of orphans in the world. 4.5 million Children whose families are below the poverty line. As for education, Iraqi schools are witnessing a mass dropout of students in the primary stage, at a rate of 360 male and female students per day. As the number of dropouts in 2014 was more than 100,000 students and jumped to 131,649 students at the end of 2018, which means that the country is waiting for thousands of illiterates.The lack of interest in orphan children’s sponsors to educate or guide them will end up pushing them to human trafficking. Awn is an educational initiative started in 2017 and supported by Sanad organization for economic development with the cooperation of other local NGOs that provide free education parallel to the government education for orphaned and children in the poor areas.Three educational centers have been opened, where teachers are young specialist’s volunteers. 700 students received every year from orphaned children and children of under-poverty families who receive parallel government education. The initiative is including the registration of 300 student’s families providing them with food basket and health treatment support. The program is creating more than 30 job opportunities.