Wau Girls’ School has received a hugely time-saving and much appreciated gift from Bangladeshi peacekeepers serving the United Nations Mission in South Sudan: more than a thousand text books, covering a wide range of subjects.

“Our school had a very limited number of books, which meant that we had to copy everything from a blackboard. This [process] has been taking a lot of our time”, says Mary Achol, one of the students at the school in Wau, in the north-western part of the country.

Mary and her classmates were over the moon when they received the unexpected school material from the Bangladeshi peacekeepers, who decided to go beyond their normal duties of protecting civilians and building durable peace.

“We used to share one text book between ten students, but now we can have one each,” Mary’s fellow student Sara Abdelmonem explains.

Robust text books are critical in contributing to a higher quality of education in war-torn South Sudan, where the protracted, ongoing conflict and subsequent economic collapse has made school material hard to come by. The text books delivered to Wau Girls’ School have been printed in Bangladesh and nimbly cover science, social studies, mathematics and other important subject matters.

Lt. Col.  Faruquzzaman, Acting Commander of the Bangladeshi peacekeepers in Wau, said the proactive donation is meant to enhance the knowledge of the pupils. 

“It is a gift from our hearts. We hope it will support the school children and nurture them to lead this nation in the future”, he said.