BY ADOW JUBAT
In a rare special drive to raise importance of education among the pastoral' communities in Garissa County former secondary school leavers in the area has formed a lobby group to sensitize communities on importance of sending their children to school.
The old students, who mainly completed their high school education last year, said that they embarked on the mission to raise households' school representation, after experiencing that those who got the opportunities to go to school never come back to their communities to sensitize them on the benefits of education.
The lobby group dubbed as The Mirror of the youth" said they want to raise awareness on the advantages of education to the community using a mirror effect, where those who have succeed in life after going through education system will be compared with their age mates, who are languishing in perennial poverty and life of deprivation.
Mohamed Diyad the patron of Mirror of youth said they come with initiative, to start a conversation among the community so that families can debate using available scenarios to justify the importance of taking children to schools regardless of their gender.
"We have not through our layman observation that, today the poor families who embraced education and invested their little resources in educating their sons and daughters, were living in enviable lifestyle after their children got employed compared to families, who rejected to give their children the chance to education" He explained.
He added "In most cases the policies used to encourage the local communities to take their children to school never worked, because its approaches, which is not applicable in the local context. You can't convince a herder with hundreds of cattle to see value of education, when mention to him a role model from other regions.We must give local examples",
Diyad who is a long serving secondary teacher said, poor performance has now becoming the second frontier to cultural practices, that is posing a serious challenge to convincing the local communities, the importance of education, after those who failed in schools gets back idling in the village.
"With limited options in urban centers, those who fail in school returns back to their villages and since they have adopted a different live style while in high schools, which are mostly in urban centers, they couldn't cope up with herding. This makes them sit around the shopping centers doing nothing. This usually cost the education of other siblings in family as parents takes example the failed children as education been a waste of time and resources venture", He noted.
Northeastern region have in the past many years performed dismally in national examinations at both primary and secondary levels, Garissa County was ranked second last after Mandera in the last year Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (K.C.P.E).
The forum to launch the lobby group brought together renowned educationist in both Islamic and secular education from the region at Mnara Academy in Garissa town, where the function was held.
Speaking at the forum Dr. Ibrahim Farah, a Kenyatta University lecturer said parents in northeastern region have poor perception on education and there is need to address the perception hurdle for improvement in school enrollments at all levels to increase.
"As educationists, we need to be vibrant and persuade our community into embracing the value of education for both girls and boys. We have seen how our region is currently facing with imminent disruption of services, after civil servant unions gave advisory to their members working in the region following the macabre killing of teachers and medical officers in Mandera" He said.
He said, 51 years after self-rule the region can't progress at a par with recent of the country despite the implementation of devolution, when it relies over 80% of its workforce coming outside the region.
He said more than any other time before, people must be made to realize the importance of education and everyone ought to invest in education at individual levels including donating time and resources to achieve this goal.
"We must first uplift our selves so that the government can give assistance but you cannot wait for the government to do everything for you, you must go a step to invest in education and do your best then others including the government and donors can step in," Said Dr. Farah who was the guest speaker.
"All stakeholders including the government, leaders, parents, learners must heavily invest in education sector to realize our region become a self sufficient in the education and labor market" He added.
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