Strategies For Achieving Our Goals
First, we will hold private meetings with key stakeholders in the Ministry of Education to push for the signing of the Safe Schools Declaration as well as the implementation of a policy that explicitly prohibits the schools in Tigray from all forms of military use. We will also present MoE with a policy brief to raise more awareness on the Tigray situation and highlight the national impacts of such a policy. Our allies in the Humanitarian Country Office will also raise awareness about this in international circles to pressure MoE and key government stakeholders to implement the Declaration. This policy will ensure the long-term protection of educational facilities in Tigray, the safe reopening of schools, and continued education of the out-of-school children.
The Education Cluster led by Save the Children and UNICEF has focused its efforts on sourcing resources from large foreign donors, while this strategy is essential, it fails to leverage the potential of local actors such as the Ethiopian Ministries of Health and Education and large Ethiopian companies that already have a history of philanthropy, although on a smaller scale. Thus, the second part of the advocacy will adopt a shift from an emphasis on international donors to local philanthropic actors who will complement the work of traditional donors and serve as sustainable, new donors. Connecting the advocacy goal to the companies’ vision and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) interests, we will raise awareness about the Tigray situation in private meetings and solicit donations to provide temporal learning opportunities for Tigrayan learners. Private actors will be encouraged to generate funds through corporate donations and promotion on websites and social media. The Humanitarian Country Office will also provide logistics, research, and monitoring and evaluation to provide accountability to donors and keep them updated on project progress. The inclusion of local actors in the alleviation of the Tigray crisis will accelerate local participation and ensure that the local aid to education continues even after humanitarian interventions ends (Sriprakash et al., 2019).
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