Congo: “I want to go back to school”

 

The 15-year-old girl speaks softly: “I want to go back to school so I do not have to be ashamed anymore.”

 

My IRC colleagues and I are in a little village in the eastern province of South Kivu, speaking with local families.  We’re trying to understand why so many children here are not going to school -- and why parents are making the difficult choice to take a child out of the classroom.

 

The girl, called Blessing, tells us she had to leave school after the fourth grade.  “I get really sad when I see the other kids run to school,” Blessing says. “I just stay home and work around the house.”

 

Of Blessing’s seven brothers and sisters, only two go to school. They are not alone. Nearly one-third of kids in Congo have never entered a classroom. And half of the children who start first grade will never finish primary school.

 

In 2000, governments from around the globe came together and identified basic education for all as one of the world’s main development priorities -- to be achieved by 2015. 

 

Despite these promises, half of Congo’s children -- 3.5 million -- still do not go to school. Between 2007 and 2008, only 5% of foreign assistance to Congo was dedicated to education. Similarly, the Congolese government committed to increase national spending on education to 16% by 2008 -- which would have brought the country in line with the Sub Saharan average -- but it committed only 8%.

 

Until Congo’s leaders and the international community invest in education, the heaviest financial burden will continue to fall on Congolese families. Poverty is a harsh reality for many of these families, and one of the main reasons children here are not getting even the most basic education.

 

A widow named Hope* tells us that three of her five children have never been to school. “I managed to get one of my kids through fifth grade, but I will now have to take the younger one out without having finished,” Hope says. “I have sold off everything we had to keep the children in school,” she explains. “I cannot afford the school fees any longer.”

 

School fees add up to approximately five US dollars a month per child. For large families like Hope’s, with between five and nine children, that amounts to 25 to 40 dollars a month. When a typical salary in Congo is about 50 dollars a month, it’s no wonder parents have to sell off their farm animals -- which are their livelihoods -- and go into debt to pay for their children’s education.

 

With only five years to go, Congo’s leaders and donor governments must act now to have even the slightest chance of reaching the Millennium Development Goal of “basic education for all” set in 2000.  Without their support, school will remain an impossible dream for millions of Congolese children like Blessing.