COVID 19 RECOMMENDATIONS ON SCHOOL REOPENING BY PWANI GBV NETWORK

If children must go back to school, vulnerable children should be the most considered.

We must think for our children please

Students might be at risk, let all the candidates resume back to school.

1. Will the Government establish sufficient instrastructure to enhance prevention of COVID 19 in public schools? 2. And if yes, can it sustain the same in case COVID 19 stays a little longer? 3. Can our public institutions afford social distancing, running water and soap for continuous handwashing? 4. Can the Government quarantee adequate awareness creation and information access to all public and private school? 5. Can the Government guarantee safety emergency transport for kids in boarding schools in case of relapse?

We can not afford to open schools at this time. With all the cases, that’s putting children at risk

I don't support the idea as the children might infect each other leading to more deaths

The petition is okay but infrastructure need to be looked into it. (enough toilets with water inside), poor class rooms for ECDs especially in rural or peri urban -like mwakirunge.

I agree

Schools re opening would have not have been an issue if the current government had kept its promise on laptops to schools in their manifesto. By now even a student in Marsabit would have access to online learning. For the sake of that student at home whose parent does not even have a smartphone and can't afford three square meals in a day, put appropriate measure with regard to curbing the spread of Covid 19 in schools and let our children attend school.

We hope that the MOE factors in the contributions in this document

I have just added this to the recommnedations

My sister I agree with you on this - reopening is just one part but implementation of the School Helath Policy is an Agenda that probably we need to push for. May be we may want to add it into our recommendations

And not just protection from contracting COVID 19, but also strick measure to ensure safe structures for access to SRH and GBV related services (including psychosocial support) for our kids when they resume studies.

The government must assure us that there is proper structures and measures that are in place to protect our children and teachers from contracting COVID-19 in school

Digital learning is not reaching the vulnerable children in town and rural areas.BOM Need to be involved in decision making.The abusers are near our children now that is our worries that need to be addressed.

I got a question that's bugging me..there were 379,573 teenage pregnancies in 2019 (NCPD 2019) and this was when schools were running and there was no COVID 19. While school is a deterrent factor to this challenge, we still have other big monsters: poor parenting, dysfunctional families, absentee parents, very little dialogue on healthy sexuality between caregivers and their children both boys and girls among others. An approach that will get this dialogue happening is key, linkages between health services and educational systems and institutions need to be actualised. We have school health policies without resources to support the proposed interventions, so even with the push to reopen schools there has to be a push to build and support the structures recommended in the school health policy. Community dialogues through various media, radios, phone messaging to challenge sexual abuse against children should be done. Community needs to embrace child protection to support interventions at school.

Rural girls are likely to be used to cushion families income, which further exposes girls to sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. This places girls at especially high risk of health and reproductive crises, including forced female genital mutilation, as well as early marriage. This puts girls at high risk of dropping out when schools reopen after Covid-19.

School closures have had major implications for learners who rely on school feeding programs as a main source of nutrition. In rural areas, most school going children were dependent on the one meal offered by the school. With everyone now at home, families ability to provide food for their children has been further reduced. In such poverty, securing food takes precedence over learning.

Yes this is very true e-learning is not effective to the poor children, ie currently where I am I see children playing from dusk to dawn, yes, there is electricity but it's like they are not aware what is going on or maybe their parents do not know about it and the risk of early pregnancy is also high

When it comes to digital learning smart phones are beyond the reach of most rural communities.