By Uangbaoje Alex, Kaduna

The Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (KADSUBEB) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have mapped the activities and assessed the capacity needs of civil society organisations (CSOs) to strengthen community-level interventions aimed at returning out-of-school children to classrooms.

The exercise was conducted during a one-day CSO mapping workshop organised by KADSUBEB with support from UNICEF under the Reaching Out-of-School Children (ROOSC) project in Kaduna State.

The workshop was designed to identify organisations working in education, document their areas of operation, assess their existing capacities and determine gaps requiring support to improve the implementation of the project.

Speaking at the workshop, UNICEF Education Officer at its Kaduna Field Office, Bala Dada, said understanding the activities and needs of CSOs was essential to strengthening education systems and ensuring that interventions reached the communities where out-of-school children live.

Dada said the organisations had already established a presence in their respective communities, making it necessary to understand their work and challenges before determining the support they required.

He explained that the workshop was a needs assessment exercise to identify capacity gaps and develop appropriate interventions rather than simply providing training without considering the organisations’ existing experience.

According to him, the information gathered would help UNICEF strengthen community-level demand for education, support School-Based Management Committees (SBMCs) and monitor whether children enrolled through the project were attending school.

He stressed that addressing learning and school participation challenges required collaboration with communities, noting that children belonged to their communities and that improving their education demanded the active involvement of local stakeholders.

Dada identified SBMCs and SUBEBs as important structures for mobilising communities and supporting efforts to improve access to education and learning outcomes.

He said the ROOSC project was a four-year intervention targeting 1,000 out-of-school children for reintegration into the school system, with the government, Save the Children and UNICEF among the organisations involved in its implementation.

He explained that the project had five components, with UNICEF responsible for the system-strengthening component, which includes creating demand for education at the community level and improving collaboration with stakeholders.

The UNICEF officer added that CSOs were represented on the project’s steering committee and technical working groups, providing opportunities for their contributions to inform implementation and coordination.

He said the mapping exercise would also help identify where the organisations operated and the specific interventions needed to improve their effectiveness.

Dada noted that the findings would guide decisions on support for the organisations and help strengthen collaboration through project work plans, steering committee engagements and quarterly and semi-annual review meetings involving SUBEB leadership.

He also highlighted challenges associated with collecting learners’ National Identification Numbers (NIN), which he said were required for learner registration and tracking in line with federal standards.

According to him, out of an estimated 2.8 million children, only 1.1 million had been captured, partly because of difficulties associated with missing NIN records.

He urged teachers and school administrators to prioritise the collection of NIN information during student registration to improve education data management and learner tracking.

Dada said improved data collection, community participation and coordination among education stakeholders would be important to measuring progress and ensuring that children brought back to school remained in the education system.

He thanked participating organisations for their contributions and encouraged continued cooperation through the project’s technical working groups and other coordination structures.