Education Base

Education in Difficult Circumstances Research, Resources, Training and Publications

January 2017

Founded in 1991 as the Education Programme for Sudanese Refugees, Education Base is a Consultancy organisation specialising in Education and Training in difficult circumstances, whether slow-burn situations such as in displaced camps and slum areas or in situations of crisis during and after civil conflict and natural disasters.

Education Base bridges the gap between humanitarian intervention (such as emergency training) and development, recognizing that there is no quick fix for good education and training. Education Base is comfortable working in multi-cultural settings and working with individuals, groups and government authorities.

Education Base designs, implements and evaluates projects. At the programme level, Education Base also advises and assists you to develop sound educational policy.  Education Base carries out surveys and research using local youth teams familiar with the area and the people we work for.

Education Base has many years’ educational experience, especially work for youth, refugees, displaced people, street children and children affected by the AIDS epidemic.  Education Base will work anywhere and is currently has teams and offices in Eastern Congo, Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda.

Education Base has carried out consultancies for - or managed projects - for the British Council, DfID, European Commission, and many NGOs.  Education Base’s staff have worked for and with UNDP/UNOPS, UNHCR, UNESCO-PEER, IOM, World Bank, UNICEF, Government, ILO, USAID, MINUSCA, MINUSMA, MONUSCO; British Council/DFID, INGOs such as NRC and Save the Children. Windle Trust; Schools, churches, youth organisations

Education Base has provided advice for new NGOs setting up, training for NGO staff, provided management for an NGO for an interim period. 

It is a basic principle of Education Base that it also provides capacity-building for all with whom it works. All field managers and most staff of Education Base are nationals of the country they work in.

Who do we work for?

Youth

Education Base has a special focus on youth and has set up or supported youth centres, youth clubs, youth magazines and youth FM radio. Education Base has provided and implemented itself programmes for Children and Youth affected by the AIDS epidemic and by war, including ex-militias, youth in and out of school, working or unemployed.

In Goma, and other locations in Congo we provide livelihood skills, especially in languages and IT and Communication technology.

We specialise in providing peer-educators for Life Skills and HIV/AIDS prevention among youth.

Those who find it difficult to get education

Education Base has worked extensively with refugees, returnees, displaced people, and, importantly with those who were trapped behind the lines or isolated in occupied areas (the ‘stayees’).  In Uganda we teach young women who had been abducted by the LRA. They now learn following an accelerated (‘catch-up’) primary learning programme.  Their babies are looked after in a crèche while they are in class.

This includes the normally unreached: the unemployed or partly employed who have never completed their education, house-girls and houseboys, young people with no means to go to normal schools, those who are normally missed out, passed over or ignored. This can be by accelerated and catch-up education, or improvement of their language and communication skills.

Civil servants, NGO employees, Self-employed

Education Base provides courses (both direct and by distance methods) to upgrade the Communication Skills of Government staff and NGO workers as well as the self-employed. We train NGO workers in all aspects of report-writing, project proposal design and writing. This appeals particularly to women’s NGOs.

Teachers

Education Base supports and trains teachers by direct and distance education methods. We train emergency teachers on the job where the teaching force needs to be rebuilt and can do this in English, French, Swahili and Arabic. 

Education Base Languages

Education Base has a special objective which is to improve the quality of language and communication skills at all levels, including oral work designed for those such as radio announcers who need oral skills. We teach English, French, and Swahili in our different centres.  There is a special emphasis on helping people to know their existing level using tests we have developed.

Recent studies

OOSC Mali

OOSC Guinea

Registered in Uganda: 2012 No 159576

South Sudanese Refugees in North Uganda

Hi, I am Barry Sesnan, quality adviser and co-founder of Education Base.  

Education Base is a small organisation in Uganda which is dedicated to helping youth who can't stay in school, usually because they have to work to help their families.  
We do this by running local drop-in centres (Echo Bravo centres) which provide a place to learn, often in the evening, a place to be (when home is overcrowded and has no space  or light), a place to improve skills,  a place to charge a phone or consult the internet and the support to study in breaks during the working day with distance education manuals and on their smartphones.

Sometimes this level of support is enough to discourage migration to Europe by providing some hope of a better footer at home.  We are starting such centres in Mali, Central African Republic and D R Congo where we have local and competent members.

The current problem: There is a massive influx of refugees into Northern Uganda from the renewed civil war in South Sudan.  Our recent study there shows that the refugee youth need exactly this kind of support so they can use this time in exile profitably, even if they have no work to do.

The centres, having libraries and copying equipment, also serve to support the teachers (often volunteers) and new schools to avoid each school having to be fully stocked at first. 

In the second phase, not covered by this plea, we want teachers to have laptops / tablets with all the support they need to teach the curriculum.

We want to set up as many as 11 centres in the camps one of which, the Mother Centre will be more advanced and complex and will supply the others with materials and a rotating teaching staff.

The money will be used to provide two rooms and a small office (with solar power and small generator) in each centre (often situated in a school or admin centre), a mother centre of four rooms with wi-fi and a stock of books, charts and materials.   There will be a stipend for a local teacher or senior youth to look after the centre.  

This is an urgent need with the new year, and because the centres can roll out easily one by one the funds can be put to good use quite quickly.  With three thousand pounds we can do a small centre and run it for six months.  We would need 9000 pounds for the mother centre.  A field motorbike would be required at approx approximately 2000 pounds. 

This is very important to us because we have done it successfully before; indeed some of the older centres set up during the last crisis (but in a slightly different area) are still open. The current refugees are often the families of those who benefitted from the system in the 90s and they wholeheartedly support us setting up these new ones.  In those days the centres were the only connection for the refugees to the outside world and served as post office, community centre, home for clubs and sports and training centres.  

During the start up phase we will be hoping to get further funding to supplement funds hopefully raised by this phase.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/26/fleeing-war-south-sudanese-create-booming-camps-in-uganda.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fworld+(Internal+-+World+Latest+-+Text)