Support UNICEF's Schools for Africa Program

Schools for Africa is a joint campaign founded by UNICEF and the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 2004 to promote education for all children in Africa. The campaign aims to increase access to quality basic education for all children, with a special emphasis on girls, orphans, children living in extreme poverty, and other vulnerable children. With more than 60 years of experience as the world’s leader for children, UNICEF has the resources and expertise to provide these children with access to quality education.

Within this campaign, UNICEF is working with governments, local authorities, communities, and other partners in six of Africa’s most vulnerable countries—Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—to benefit over four million children by:

• Building and rehabilitating schools, and providing proper furniture such as desks
• Creating schools that offer a safe and protective environment where children
can learn and play
• Educating children about day-to-day hygiene and HIV prevention
• Providing access to clean water, and separate sanitation facilities for both boys and girls
• Providing proper school materials, such as exercise books, pens, and other student supplies as well as sports and recreation equipment
• Training teachers to provide children with quality education and basic life skills.

UNICEF has also just recently scaled up the Schools for Africa campaign to 5 more countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, and Niger. UNICEF and Schools for Africa focus on providing quality education to the most disadvantaged children who are most often denied an access to schools and learning. For most of Africa’s children, education represents the only way out of a life of entrenched poverty. Only those who can read, write, and do arithmetic can hope to end the cycles of poverty and disease.

But school is about much more than just job skills. It’s playing an increasingly vital role in helping children to protect themselves against the diseases that can ravage poor communities. Additionally, the campaign helps build children’s confidence and the cohesiveness of their communities. Educated children are less likely to become victims of violence and abuse and are more likely to invest in improving their community when they are grown. The positive effects of even basic education quickly multiply, as children who have benefited from schooling themselves strive to secure even better opportunities for their own families.