A delegation from the United States Congress today visited an UNMISS protection-of-civilians site (PoC) in Juba and toured activities supported with U.S. Government funding.

According to Haile Gasmaw, UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Specialist, these projects include water, sanitation and hygiene activities, water quality monitoring, schools and early child development programmes, as well as child protection through psycho-social programmes.

“UNICEF is implementing many activities … meant to create a conducive environment for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and conflict related cases funded by the U.S. government,” he said.

The delegation also met with school authorities and community representatives and discussed the various interventions in schools.

The Hope Primary School head teacher, Borja Madit Bakam, said the school has 4614pupils of which 1896 are girls.

Revealing that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had contracted 32 semi-permanent class rooms, he thanked the agency for providing services which made learning possible.

“Your coming will be positive to our children and the nation,” he said. “Without (your support), we would not be (at) this stage.”

Dobuol Both Luak, the PoC Site Education Coordinator, noted that although education partners are helping the IDPs, there were still many challenges.

“Teachers get less than 50 dollars per month but they continue to teach,” he said. “(Children have) no school uniform and it is difficult to know who is a student and who is not.”

He appealed to the visiting delegation to support payment of teachers, preferably in U.S. dollars, to enable them to deal with challenges related to the depreciation of the local South Sudanese currency.

Another problem faced at the school was the lack of a fence, making it difficult for the administration to control movement of pupils in and out of school compound, Mr. Luak said.

He also cited shortage of classrooms, noting that some classes had up to 100 children and were very difficult to handle.

Mr. Luak also revealed that although there were two secondary schools in the PoC site, these were currently being run by the community without funding support from any organization.

The delegation appreciated the role of the parent teacher association of mobilizing girls from the community to go to school.

Kade Betty, a Child Protection Manager with non-governmental organization Terre Des Hommes, said the children’s level of stress was reducing because they now had an opportunity to express themselves, share their experiences and engage in different activities.

“There are focus group discussions on issues that are cultural but harmful to them like earlier marriage, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health,” she said, adding that the programmes were helping to improve the children’s attitudes and lives by providing psycho social support.

She however noted that adolescents had been left out of many projects and said there was now increased emphasis to focus on them and provide them with a conducive environment to express their views freely.