Carpentry training course gives children living with disabilities lifelong skills

Area:

Population: 136,000

Plan implements projects in the areas of child rights and quality, basic education across Sotouboua in central Togo.

Programme highlights

Helping children with disabilities

To help children living with disabilities integrate into society, Plan has provided training for them in technical skills such as carpentry and dressmaking. Communities have also been instructed on how to help reduce the number of disabilities amongst the population. 

Girl-friendly schools

Many girls were not attending school because they had to take care of their younger siblings. Plan has helped communities set up and run nurseries where young children can be looked after, leaving older sisters to go to school, and their mothers to work. Local teachers and parent-teacher associations are trained to run the centres.

“There is justice now that our daughters can go to school. With the nurseries in our villages, our daughters do not have to stay at home and take care of their younger siblings,” said Dibe, a 35-year old housewife from Tcharé-Baou.

Quality basic education for everyone

To help increase the number of girls attending school, Plan awards scholarships to girls most in need of financial assistance. They are also given materials, such as exercise books to help them in their studies.

Essowazu, a secondary school girl from Yaloume, said: “The scholarship has been an incentive for me and other beneficiaries to stay in school and work hard. If my sisters had had this opportunity, I’m sure they would not have dropped out of school and got married so early.”

Plan has also worked with communities to build new school blocks, offices and latrines to improve the learning environment. School cleaning committees have been set up to ensure the new facilities are kept clean.

Development plan

Plan has provided technical and financial resources to help children form clubs, which then received training on the importance of an area’s local development. Children are trained in their villages and at events such football matches, and transmit their messages on child rights through theatre sketches and song.

One 12- year-old boy from Sonde, said: “Through the development education project, we now know that the development of our area is our responsibility. We need to come together to ensure our own development.”

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