School Reparing Support

 

 

We continue to repair school buildings in Iraq.

---

 

Many internally displaced people have also fled to the autonomous Kurdish region, where the battle to reclaim the country from the militant group ISIL was ongoing.Victory was declared in October 2017 and many of the displaced people returned, but 730,000 people still remained, and 240,000 Syrian refugees remained in the area.

 

Due to the shortage of supplies caused by repeated conflicts, many of the buildings and equipment were inferior in quality, and in addition to this, the rapid increase in the number of refugee students caused them to deteriorate, leaving 327 schools in need of repair.　Therefore, this project has prioritized schools with the most urgent need for supplementary education. To date, we have completed repairs to 4 schools in FY 2016, 7 schools in FY 2018, and 4 schools in FY 2019, for a total of 15 schools.

School building after repair

---

 

At Shubat Elementary School, which has been repaired, the students are doing well in the repaired school building. We have heard some happy comments. Ghulam, a second-grade student, loves science and she, too, wants to be a doctor in the future. It seems that being a doctor is a popular profession in Iraq.　She said with a sparkle in her eyes, “I am happy to continue my studies in a clean classroom”.

 

　　　　　Students at Shubat Elementary Schoo

 

 

School building before repair

The ceiling at Shubat Elementary School.　　　　　　　　　　　　　The Wall at Ayrol vocational high school

 

↓

 

School building after repair

The ceilings and walls, which had been peeling, have been nicely repaired.

 

 

 

 

Peshukawtin Elementary and junior high School is now a beautiful building due to repairs.

 

School building before repair

 

↓

 

School building after repair

 

The principal of Peshukawtin Elementary and junior high School is showing visitors of the school a pre-repair school album.

A workshop for school maintenance! We made an action plan for cleaning.

---

 

Teachers from each of the four schools thought about what to do to keep their school buildings clean and created an action plan for future actions.

 

 

We broke into groups by school and discussed how to keep the school clean. Once we created an action plan, it’s important to take action!
Various initiatives had been put in place, such as placing trash cans in the school and displaying posters to discourage littering. Presently, teachers and students are working together to clean up the school grounds.

Teachers and students working together to clean it up!

---

 

The children are also actively cleaning up.

We maintained a PC classroom and provided PC training for teachers!

---

 

There are 9 vocational high schools in Erbil province, where students in the 1st and 2nd year of high school have PC classes 3 times a week.
However, due to the lack of PCs, students could only read the textbook and could not actually touch and learn. Therefore, in the 3rd semester, we decided to set up a PC classroom at the school to provide an environment where students can learn by touching PCs. We also conducted a survey of teachers working at the vocational high school and found that most of them had never touched a PC before and knew how to turn it on, and that all of the school’s paperwork and test-taking was done by hand. Handwriting could be time-consuming and miscalculations could cause paperwork to take a lot of time. That’s why we decided to provide PC training to teachers.

 

Teachers teach each other how to use it.

In the classroom with PCs, students were taking classes using PCs in the new semester.
One of the students in the Department of Electronic Engineering, a 12th grade student (equivalent to the 3rd grade of high school in Japan) who came to the school was very happy to see the newly installed PCs and said, “Now that we have PCs at school, I can finally learn subjects that are useful for practical use.

Students can now actually use computers at Ayrol vocational high school.

This project is made possible by the Grant Aid for Japanese NGO’s Projects from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and your generous donations. Thank you very much for your support.

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Iraq, we have been repairing school buildings since 2016.

---

 

Iraq fought from 2014 to 2017 to reclaim its land from the militant group ISIS. The autonomous Kurdish government was also involved in this fight, while it hosted 880,000 internally displaced people and 250,000 Syrian refugees.

 

As a result, the Kurdish Ministry of Education was busy dealing with the rapidly increasing number of refugee and internally displaced students, and there were many projects that were stalled. School repair is one of them, with 350 schools in Erbil province alone in need of repair as of April 2017.

 

In addition, the rapid increase in the number of refugee students has accelerated the deterioration of the building, and many parts of the building were in danger of collapsing or falling down.

 

Therefore, in this project, we are prioritizing schools with the most urgent repair needs. So far, we have completed work on four school buildings in FY 2016, seven school buildings in FY 2018, and are in the process of repairing four schools in FY 2019.

 

We also held workshops with the teachers to help them keep the school clean for a long time after the repairs, and we shared our knowledge on how to do so, so that teachers and students in every school began to organize clean-up activities.

 

 

 

The school building before and after repairs

---

 

ナバズ小学校、補修前の校舎

 

 

 

補修後の校舎

 

 

A school building that was cracked and dangerous with cracks in the walls has been transformed into a bright, red-focused schoolhouse!

 

 

 

Workshop to create an action plan for cleaning

---

 

 

 

Facilitated by IVY staff (left), the teachers were divided into groups by school to come up with ideas on how to keep the school clean.

 

 

We’ll clean up our own school!

---

 

 

 

 

After the workshop, each school started their own clean-up activities, and the 7 schools shared their own school activities on social media.

 

 

Minister of Education Kurdistan and Consul Moriyasu visited Chiman Girls High School.

---

 

 

On October 29, 2018, the completion ceremony of the repair work of ７schools in Erbil City was held at Chiman Girls High School in Erbil City. The ceremony was attended by the Minister of Education of Kurdistan and Consul Moriyasu of the Consul’s Office in Erbil, who inspected the cleaned up classrooms and auditoriums, after which the Minister sent a letter of thanks to IVY and the people of Japan for their support.

 

From right to left, IVY Takeda, Secretary of Education Erbil, Minister of Education and Consul Moriyasu.

 

Ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Education to celebrate the completion of repair work at 7 schools

 

The Minister of Education was shown around the renovated school building by the Consulate and IVY staff.

 

A token of appreciation was presented to the Japanese government and people through the consul.

 

IVY also received a certificate of appreciation.

 

The students dressed in traditional costumes and presented a song to the students. After that, they tried on Japanese Yukata and introduced Japanese games such as Kendama.

 

This project is made possible by the Grant Aid for Japanese NGO’s Projects from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and your generous donations. Thank you very much for your support.