Anera is Building 6 New Preschools in Palestine
by Liz Demarest
Posted in: News
As part of Anera’s early childhood development (ECD) work, we are currently building six new preschools in the northern West Bank. These schools, like the others Anera has built or renovated, are located in rural and economically disadvantaged communities, where access and availability are particularly limited.
Early childhood has an immense impact on a person’s development and the course of their future success in school and adult life. Investments in ECD programs have shown a greater potential to reverse cycles of poverty and to contribute to countries’ overall economic development than similar investments in later stages of schooling or jobs programs. Despite these facts, current investments in ECD programs in the Middle East and in Palestine specifically are insufficient.
Anera has been leading the way in Palestine’s ECD sector through a long-term, holistic, and sustainable model that combines physical improvements to school infrastructure with teacher training, curriculum development, caregiver involvement and the provision of reading and other materials and resources.
To date, Anera has renovated or built 10 percent of Palestine’s preschools. In each location, Anera mobilizes the surrounding community by employing local construction and craft workers and using locally available materials whenever possible. After the school is built, the Palestinian Ministry of Education assumes responsibility for its operating costs and teachers’ salaries, ensuring sustainability of the project and cementing the community’s right to a quality education.
Preschools Anera is Building Now
The Ni’lin Preschool will provide a great learning environment to 70 preschoolers in this small Palestinian town. Work is progressing well and the school should open its doors in a few months.
This preschool in the small Palestinian town of Madama in the West Bank will soon have its foundation laid. When the school opens, 70 preschoolers will benefit from an inspiring and fun learning environment.
The new Bazariya Preschool that Anera is constructing in the northern West Bank will have solar panels and big windows to let in lots of natural light.
In Nassariya, a remote, agricultural village of some 1,500 residents near Nablus, there are no schools of any kind. Children are forced to travel three miles to attend the closest primary and secondary schools. Preschool-aged children have no options, as there is no preschool for them in or near the village. But Anera is changing that.
The preschool at Deir Al Hatab, West Bank, will accommodate 100 preschoolers when Anera finishes building it. The work is generously funded by the Ghiath and Nadia Sukhtian Foundation.
Anera is finishing up construction of a new preschool in the West Bank town of Qibya. We are on schedule to complete and equip the school by mid-March 2019 to be ready for a grand opening ceremony on April 4th, which the Minister of Education plans to attend.
Later in 2019, Anera will start work on three additional new preschools and two renovations. Funding for all of this work comes from individuals and foundations.
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