Review

Africa with the romance of Mother Nature

We think vaguely. I want to go to Africa...

Dreaming of a utopia of grasslands where lions, elephants, and giraffes live in peace...

(Photo source: Fliker @Choi Yong-geun)

However, Africa is a continent where many people still suffer from political and economic problems.

South Sudan, a remote part of Africa!

South Sudan is well known as the region where the late Father Lee Tae-seok, known for the movie ‘Don’t Cry Tones,’ devoted his life to serving.

With the beginning of joint British-Egyptian rule in 1899, Sudan was administratively divided into northern and southern parts, and the current South Sudan emerged. Even after Sudan gained independence in 1956, long conflicts between the North and South, including the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972) and the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), continued due to religious, racial, and cultural conflicts, and as many as 2 million people were killed. In July 2011, South Sudan became the UN's 193rd new country, gaining independence from Sudan after a long civil war of 56 years.

(Photo source: News 1 Korea)

However, even after South Sudan became independent in 2011, fighting continues due to territorial disputes and livestock disputes, resulting in constant tension in the border area. There is an endless stream of people losing their homes and taking refuge due to the deep civil war that has lasted for decades.

(Photo source: Fliker @United Nations Photo)

South Sudan is a country with abundant water resources from the Nile River, fertile and vast land, and the 7th largest oil reserves in Africa. However, infrastructure has been destroyed due to a long civil war, and even after independence, poverty is deepening due to armed conflicts over the border and crude oil between Sudan and South Sudan, large-scale refugees, conflicts between tribes in South Sudan, and food shortages.

(Photo source: Fliker @United Nations Photo)

South Sudan is currently one of the poorest countries in the world and ranks last in the world on almost every indicator, including health, education, children, and malnutrition.South Sudan is also a country of children, with children under the age of 18 accounting for more than 50% of the total population due to the deaths of adults due to war.

South Sudan’s education system

Nursery School, a kindergarten, lasts for about 2 years, and Elementary School is from 1st to 8th grade (Korean middle school up to 2nd grade). After graduating from elementary school, students go to a 4-year secondary school (equivalent to high school in Korea), but the advancement rate is not high. The next is Senior Secondary School, which is a two-year program and is equivalent to a basic college in Korea. There are few schools like this in the whole of South Sudan. Next is College, which has 2-year and 4-year programs. The official universities are the University of Juba and a branch of a British university, and the teachers' college is also a two-year program. There is almost no specialized high-level education, and the current state of the entire education system is to provide education equivalent to elementary, middle, and high school levels.

Children from Orobe Elementary School met by WECA

About an hour's drive from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, there is a small school with less than 100 students. The name of the school is Orobe Elementary School!

The place where the school is located is a slum where people who left their hometowns to come to the city to make money but have no place to live live together. Most of the students are children from slums, and there are more children who cannot come here.

Children who can't go to school because they don't have tuition

One year's tuition is about 25,000 to 50,000 won in Korean currency, but there are many children who cannot attend school because of that. There is no free education because the government does not provide financial support, and everyone is educated at their own expense. As a result, there are as few as 3 to 4 to as many as 7 to 8 school-age children in one household, and the burden of tuition is significant. South Sudan, like Korea during its poor past, has a high passion for education, but it is common for some poor parents to not send their children to school.

poor educational environment

▶ For these children who have difficulty buying a pencil, pencils are their hope for writing the future!

I'm using roughly made desks and chairs and painting a board to use it as a blackboard. The floor is just dirt and hardly any chalk.

▶ WECA delivered school supplies so that no child could miss school due to lack of school supplies.

The quality of teachers is low, and classes are not conducted properly. There are so many children who, by the third grade of elementary school, cannot even write their own name properly, let alone speak the common language properly, or even count numbers from 1 to 30.

poor school classrooms

The school classroom was ugly.

▶ Each notebook will come together to make these children's dreams come true.

The school was built with bricks with support from a foreign organization, but classes were held in a poor educational environment without any proper educational equipment.

Education is the seed of development and hope for the future!

▶ For children who do not have even a short stick pencil, getting a new pencil seems like a dream.

Support for immediate survival is important, but education is the seed of development and hope for the future. WECA, the World Educational Cultural Aid, seeks to create hope through education so that children in South Sudan do not give up hope and learning.

▶ Children who are happy with just one pencil

Our interest and support are more desperately needed than ever so that children can study to their heart’s content by equipping them with proper classrooms as soon as possible and supplying them with textbooks and school supplies.

▶ Give hope to the children of Orobe Elementary School!

[Sponsorship inquiry: 02-2689-3959]