It\u2019s a happy day for Omar. He\u2019s excited that he\u2019s going to school. Or rather, that school has come to him.
\nThe 11-year-old, who\u2019s from Kobani in Syria, now lives in the small township of Kawa, south of Erbil. He\u2019s been out of school for three years.<\/p>\n
But that changed recently when a mobile school was set up on vacant land in Kawa, next to the soccer pitch. Two small tents have been pitched and are filled with children sitting on bright plastic chairs.<\/p>\n
With a generous contribution from the German Development Bank (KfW), UNICEF partner INTERSOS has equipped a mobile school with supplies and teachers in order to provide learning opportunities for out of school children in to two locations in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.<\/strong><\/p>\n The pilot programme began in late July and is scheduled to run until the end of September. The children participate in two hours of education, three times a week. The initiative is designed to get them back into formal education.\u00a0\u201cNow I can meet my friends, and study,\u201d Omar says. \u201cI want to become a doctor so that I can do surgery and help people.\u201d<\/p>\n There are just over 239,000 Syrian refugees in Iraq. UNICEF estimates that 64,000 Syrian children have had their education disrupted.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a combination of reasons why children are missing school,\u201d says INTERSOS Education Officer Marco Fuduli. \u201cSchool might be too expensive or too far away, or there may not be an Arabic language programme.\u201d The school employs the Italian Montessori method of teaching, which is based on interactive learning and play. It operates in two daily shifts with teachers hired from the community. The programme identifies children with special needs and also provides information for families on how to enroll their children in formal schooling when the academic year starts in the fall. \u201cSchool was too far away, and too expensive for my family,\u201d says Rueda, who has ten brothers and sisters. \u201cI want to become an engineer, so I feel very excited and joyful to be here. And I\u2019ve made new friends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a happy day for Omar. He\u2019s excited that he\u2019s going to school. Or rather, that school has come to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[679,640,678],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-iraq","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nOmar is one of 270 children who are back in the classroom after a long break and he\u2019s excited about the opportunity. \u201cI like this school,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s fine for us. I don\u2019t have a favourite subject, I want to learn them all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRueda, 13, is also enjoying the novelty of sitting in a classroom. She\u2019s been out of school for two and a half years and her sister has been helping her with reading and writing.<\/p>\n