2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Afghanistan

When 2021 began, War Child was active in seven Afghan provinces, distributing educational materials to keep 25,000 children learning through pandemic-related disruptions and supporting communities in strengthening safety measures to improve child protection.

Later in the year, displacement, poverty, and malnutrition skyrocketed across Afghanistan following the collapse of the government and takeover by the Taliban. The fragile security situation caused many international organizations to scale back operations or leave the country altogether, driving up demand for critical humanitarian services.

War Child Canada remained in the country, working with local partners to distribute food and essential supplies to families most in need. Thanks to our twenty-year track record of success in Afghanistan, along with our 100% regional staff and strong community ties, we were able to continue our work with women and children in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover.

Our team provided 200 vulnerable women with basic education, business skills training, and access to capital to start much-needed local businesses. Through these ventures, they have been empowered to earn an income and meet the immediate needs of their families. War Child also provided emergency educational programming to more than 6,000 newly-displaced children in Kabul. With the generous support of donors, we are currently expanding this programming to reach 10,000 more children in Kabul and building 36 protective spaces to support 2,000 children in Nangarhar.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

The second and third waves of COVID-19 exacerbated existing disparities between boys and girls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), further widening the gender gap in education.

While cultural practices and gender norms that favour educating boys had already excluded many girls from school before the pandemic, the worsening socio-economic situation across the DRC placed additional burdens on already strapped households. To save money, many girls were forced to drop out of school to help support their families — especially those from the poorest households in remote rural areas.

To ensure girls had the opportunity to keep up with their studies without financial barriers, War Child continued to provide free radio-based educational programming in community centres across six provinces in the DRC. In addition, our teams worked in partnership with local communities to raise awareness of child rights and the benefits of girls’ education, helping to shift gender norms and get more than 1,800 girls back into classrooms during the 2021 school year.

SOUTH SUDAN

Food insecurity, driven by violence over scarce resources and exacerbated by climate change, is a serious challenge in South Sudan. In 2021, the country was hit by periods of increased flooding and intense droughts which caused heavy losses in agriculture and livestock, disrupting livelihoods and pushing more than 7 million people deeper into poverty.

Rural communities across the country were the hardest hit. To enhance the capacity of farming families, especially those that are female-led, War Child continued to provide more than 2,200 households with agricultural and business training, educating farming families on sustainable planting and harvesting techniques to increase their yields and sustain lands and natural resources.

This project has not only empowered female farmers as community leaders and income generators, but it also ensures they can adapt and respond to the changing climate and feed their families for years to come.

SUDAN

A complex interplay of multiple factors—including conflict, climate change, political instability, and a sustained economic crisis—continued to drive insecurity and internal displacement in Sudan in 2021. The humanitarian situation was made even more complex following a military coup in October 2021 and renewed inter-communal violence across the region of West Darfur. The sharp increase in armed conflict levelled homes and settlement communities, leaving almost half a million civilians displaced and in desperate need of assistance — including many of War Child’s own staff members and their families.

Immediately, our local team mobilized to respond to the escalating crisis, focusing our short-term emergency efforts on providing safe, protective spaces for children and families struggling to access food, clean water, and other essential services. War Child also expanded our livelihoods programming to reach almost 50,000 internally displaced people, providing agriculture and business training and access to seeds and livestock to ensure long-term food security for communities most in need.

Renewed violence across the border in Ethiopia’s Tigray region also led to an influx of Ethiopian refugees fleeing into Sudan. To meet the needs of thousands of refugee youth dealing with high degrees of trauma and loss, our team built two new centres in the Um Rakuba refugee camp and began providing recreational programming. In addition to language training, art therapy, and team sports, youth receive counselling and other psychosocial supports. As the sole provider of youth services in this community, War Child has reached almost 9,500 young refugees so far, providing them with a much-needed source of stability and safety.

UGANDA

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, Uganda’s schools were closed in March 2020 and remained closed for the entirety of 2021 (they did not reopen until January 2022, making it the world’s longest pandemic-related school closure). This closure had severe repercussions for students across the country. Those especially at risk of falling even further behind in their studies were the many refugees displaced by war who had already missed months, or even years of schooling.

War Child Canada has created a successful, first-of-its-kind secondary-level accelerated learning program in Uganda which has provided tens of thousands of students with the opportunity to catch-up on their learning. The intensive program compresses two years of missed schooling into one so students can eventually re-enter the formal education system.

In 2021, to ensure these vulnerable students could continue to make progress in their studies despite the ongoing school closures, War Child’s local team pivoted to a distance-education model, providing students with the materials, supplies, and encouragement they needed to support (and stick with) at-home learning. 42% of students—almost half of whom are refugees—graduated from the program last year and transitioned to formal secondary schools to continue their learning. For a highly transient refugee population that is often denied the opportunity to attend school in host countries, this is an incredible success.

YEMEN

Yemen continues to be one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. More than 20 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance and 2 million children are out of school due to the ongoing civil war.

War Child Canada is one of the few international organizations that has been granted permission to work in Yemen. In 2021, we began operating in the country’s southern region.

In addition to improving water and sanitation in education facilities, our local team was hard at work rebuilding schools destroyed during the fighting. We also worked with partners to facilitate teacher and community training to improve child protection in Yemen and provided school supplies and other materials so children could get back to learning.