Réussite et Épanouissement via l'Apprentissage et L'Insertion au Système Éducatif (REALISE)

Project completed implementation in October 2021

Operating in six provinces of the DRC, REALISE (which translates as 'success and fulfilment through learning') provided direct support to 69,460 vulnerable girls and their families through 455 schools and 16 alternative education institutions in community-based education centres. It also provided school supplies, and bursaries and technical support to saving and loans groups to increase families’ financial capacity to pay for girls’ education.

Specific school-based interventions aimed to increase girls’ literacy and numeracy results. Teachers were offered professional development to strengthen their skills and motivation. Awareness-raising activities and training were carried out within schools and communities, which aimed to help them to protect girls, support their wellbeing and challenge harmful gender norms. It also aimed to help families and communities develop the advocacy tools needed to hold to account the institutions responsible for children’s education and wellbeing. The project also worked with children to help them cope at times of displacement and in the aftermath of an emergency, and offered them education on sexual and reproductive health.

Activities

• Supported literacy and numeracy booster activities with children
• Equipped all 455 primary and secondary schools with book banks, classroom supplies and more than 21,500 textbooks and teachers' manuals
• Established 252 learning/reading clubs in primary schools, reaching 11,412 children (5,902 girls)
• Created an SRH Information Hotline and established 455 SRH clubs in primary and secondary schools, reaching 24,482 children (17,725 girls) 
• Distributed more than 18,400 menstrual hygiene kits to girls in SRH clubs 
• Provided 77,547 school bursaries to educationally vulnerable girls in Grades 6, 7 and 8
• Offered teacher professional development to over 2,800 teachers (423 women)
• Provided conflict-sensitive education training and psychosocial support training for teachers
• Provided financial and material support, and training, to 16 Accelerated Education Programmes
• Supported the establishment and functioning over 250 savings and loans groups 
• UNdertook community awareness raising on the value of girls’ education and sexual and reproductive health education, safeguarding, GBV and COVID-19
• Created a safeguarding/accountability hotline for beneficiaries and stakeholders in all 6 provinces and responded to over 8,000 complaints and requests for information

Save the Children: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/

Save the Children in DRC: https://drc.savethechildren.net/