Ending child marriage in Yemen through the Our Dreams Come True project teaching girls English

Educating the children of displaced families and girls in Yemen to achieve long-term goals: building leaders in volunteer and humanitarian work who can carry Yemen's issues to the world and turn its attention to helping Yemen rise again after the war, raising the level of education and development, and helping to change society for the better in the media and the economy. It is run by the Nada Foundation for the Protection of Children's Rights in Yemen under the slogan #OurDreamComesTrue

Our Dream Comes True

A project to educate displaced girls in Yemen's camps who have fled catastrophic wars. It is the dream of every Yemeni girl to complete her education and benefit from it afterwards, and to feel its importance from the first stages of her schooling.

The main idea

Finding alternative ways of teaching English to displaced children, opening temporary classrooms and providing work for teachers whose salaries have been cut off for 3 years.

Goals:

• Finding alternatives for quality education that children benefit from in the short and medium term, ensuring that children keep receiving an education.
• Providing temporary work for teachers whose salaries have been cut off for 3 years.
• Creating awareness among the coming generations, especially girls, of the opportunities available regionally and internationally to continue their university education, whether by attending or by enrolling from their homes at internationally recognised universities that offer distance learning, in consideration of the general environment in which the girl grew up.
• Enabling the coming generations to benefit from the work opportunities widely available on the internet, which helps reduce unemployment among girls in Yemen and keeps them from being drawn, in good faith, into illegitimate work.
• Helping to develop the skills and personal potential of displaced children, with the aim of forming a nucleus of world leaders in community, political, journalistic and other activity, so as to bring about a transformation for Yemen at the level of civilisation, culture, the economy and the media. They can also be minds and clean hands that ease the suffering of Yemenis and provide radical solutions to Yemen's problems and tragedies.
• Creating a generation that helps make peace and influences society to curb the practice of child marriage and domestic violence against children and girls, and to change society for the better in a way that brings social peace and coexistence and raises people's awareness.

Why it matters

Education in Yemen was, and still is, in its worst state. It has not achieved positive, tangible results on the ground and has not been able to keep pace with the rapid development of the sciences and pass it on to learners. This has had a negative effect on the skills of Yemen's young generation, which do not meet the requirements of international employment, especially where mastering languages is concerned.
Because of the importance of languages, which connect peoples and the world with one another, Yemen struggles to convey its people's suffering to the world and to tell what is happening there. It lacks journalists, activists and political leaders who can address the world in its own languages, especially in the media and in community activism. This cuts Yemen off from the world and all its events, and leaves international journalists unable to turn their cameras and pens to events in Yemen, because they cannot find a language in which to speak with Yemenis, and they rely on media material made by parties far removed from the suffering of the people.
That is why we chose to focus on teaching languages to the coming generations, as they are the first means of exchanging the experience and knowledge that help the nation rise again, make peace and live together with the world.

Who it is for

We are aiming at the coming generations who dream of peace, coexistence and love, aged 13 to 18, so that they are qualified to enter international universities and work with international curricula. We give priority to children in the camps who left their schools and homes in search of a safe place, and then to girls because of the injustice done to them, at 90% of all the children targeted. A thousand children from different Yemeni governorates, until they complete their university studies.

Carrying out the project

The project is carried out in two phases

Phase one, 3 months (pilot)

Setting up one or two temporary classrooms near the displaced and providing male or female teachers specialised in English, supervised directly by the bodies that run the displacement camps, with the consent of each girl's guardian and within the framework of Yemeni law and order. Human rights organisations take part in carrying it out, to ensure the girls' safety from any exploitation.

Phase two, 3 months (online)

The girls who excel in the classes and do very well in learning the language will be sponsored in their education and enrolled in internationally recognised schools that offer distance learning, so that each girl can complete her education from her home without the hardship of travelling or being away from her family, in consideration of the social reality