Telling the ECSA Story

     A smiling Najmo in class.    Najmo Farah Abdi, a 7th-grade student at Haraf School in Somaliland, lives in Haraf Village just outside Hargeisa. She comes from a family of nine children. Her parents, former farmers, lost their income after a prolonged drought, making it difficult to support the family. Najmo walks an hour to school every morning. She usually eats a light breakfast at home—an omelet and tea—but often arrives at school hungry. “Sometimes I feel hungry before school even starts,” she says. Hunger made it hard for her to concentrate in class, and by the time she returned home and went to Quranic madrassa, she was too tired to focus. Her health began to suffer. After collapsing one day, Najmo was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with malnutrition. “It was heartbreaking. We couldn’t afford better food,” says her mother. Things changed when the Home-Grown School Feeding Program (HGSFP) was introduced a...

  In 2021, the Al Amarz IDP camp was a place of struggle and uncertainty for displaced families, compounded by the absence of educational opportunities for children. Families struggled to survive, and their children wandered about the camp, denied the opportunity for an education. For Headteacher Abdirizak Hassan Abdi, who himself had endured the pain of displacement, the sight of children idling in the camp instead of in classrooms was unbearable. "There was no school. No place for children to learn or even dream for a better future," he narrated.   Headteacher Abdirizak Hassan Abdi-Al-amar Community School Determined to change this reality, Abdirizak joined forces with two like-minded individuals. They pooled their modest resources, borrowed where they could, and in just ten days, constructed two makeshift classrooms. The effort was a labor of love, fueled by the belief in education’s transformative power.   The classrooms were simple—8x5 meter...