CCREAD Cameroon Online Libraries

The objective of this project is to provide remedial education to marginalized students who missed lessons due to the ongoing Anglophone humanitarian crisis and Covid-19 lockdown. This will be done in the form of online libraries set up in pilot towns to serve as complementary lessons to the current school curriculum. Classes in the South West Region regularly get suspended due to the humanitarian crisis, so these libraries will serve as a safe space for the students to catch up on their studies without interruption. These libraries will be set up in collaboration with local councils who accept to provide the running costs such as, allocation of library space in their already existing structures (rent free), electricity and security bills, while the project team pays for the computer bills. This will guarantee sustainability, and if scaled globally, will impact more lives in crisis affected zones. 

The problem this solution is working to solve is that of limited access to quality, safe and equitable learning environments to young learners. The setting up of online libraries will create this access by providing safe hybrid learning environments for these students.

The outbreak of Covid-19 brought enormous structural challenges and humanitarian impact on educational systems globally. Thus, compelling governments to put on hold planned education activities in response. In Cameron, the closure of 31,851 schools caused more than 7,000,000 children to lose access to education. In the South-West, an estimated 575,000 school-aged children were forced to stay at home due to the dual emergencies, Covid-19 outbreak and the ongoing humanitarian conflict (Cameroon Education Cluster, 2020). This put students from marginalized homes at a disadvantage as they require a lot more educational catch up due to the crisis as well as Covid-19 lockdown. Most children from crisis affected zones in the South West Region grow up deprived of an education and the long-term opportunities it affords. It is against this backdrop that this project is developed to provide access to quality inclusive remedial education to these students, thus bringing significant economic, social and health benefits to the society. 

The proposed solution is the setting up of online libraries in collaboration with local community councils for the purpose of sustainability. This is a remedial education program to complement the current school curriculum by providing a safe space for marginalized students to catch up on missed lessons as a result of the ongoing humanitarian Anglophone crisis and Covid-19 lockdown.

Trained but redundant secondary school teachers will be hired to prepare and record lessons in the different subjects taught in the curriculum and upload online in different folders. The students will access the lessons without the use of the internet.  The libraries will be set up in 5 pilot towns with about 20 computers in each. A librarian/instructor will be hired at these libraries to provide orientation to the students on how to access these lessons. 

Since September 2016, sociopolitical tensions have rocked the Northwest and Southwest regions, the two English-speaking (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon, in what is now known as the ‘Anglophone Crisis’. The multiple Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) fighting the government adopted a school boycott strategy called ‘Monday ghost towns’  and other spontaneous calls for shutdown of all activities in the regions, sometimes lasting several days and having a huge impact on children’s ability to attend school and learn. Schools have been prime targets of arson and other attacks, while teachers and students have been victims of violence, assaults, kidnapping, maiming, and in extreme situations, cold-blooded killing. For households and especially students living in situations of such vulnerability requiring social and economic support during the Anglophone crisis, the outbreak of Covid-19 is an additional crisis that they have to face and adapt to both now and in the future despite their limited resources.

The setting up of online libraries in pilot towns in the South West Region, directly takes into consideration the needs of these students who have lost so much valuable time for their education through no fault of theirs. This solution targets the specific education needs of these students by hiring trained teachers to prepare remedial lessons and record for the free use of these students. The teachers will take into consideration the trauma the students have undergone in the course of preparing the lessons, by making them less complex and very easy to understand, thus making the library a safe space for the students. Additionally, the lessons will be at the disposal of the students to access freely, and as many times as they need to, enabling slow learners to have the ample time they need. The librarians/instructors at the libraries will equally be trained to provide counseling services to the students who have experienced trauma from the crisis, as well as provide orientation to the students on how to access the lessons in the computers.  

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, learning environments in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon were already in jeopardy due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Many school-aged-children were forced to drop out of school, some regularly missing classes as a result of constant insecurity issues. Covid-19 lockdown exacerbated the already existing crisis. This challenge and the proposed solution is therefore set to go a long way in reimaging and supporting the educational system, through the hybrid online libraries guaranteed to provide equitable access to quality remedial education for the marginalized students in the South West Region of Cameroon. 

The online libraries for remedial education during crisis is a solution at its concept stage of development because it is an innovation which has not been implemented anywhere in the South West Region of Cameroon. It is an idea being explored for its feasibility to support the school curriculum for marginalized students affected by the Anglophone crisis and Covid-19 lockdown.