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The other cost of the pandemic: school dropout and early pregnancy

School has not restarted for everyone: a year and a half after the start of the pandemic, over one hundred million children and teens have not returned to the classroom. The consequences of early school leaving, in addition to educational poverty, are also forced marriages and early pregnancies, especially among minors from the most fragile families and the most disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

«The crisis triggered by the pandemic has confirmed, once more, the very close and dramatic link between economic poverty and educational poverty», Explained Katia Scannavini, Deputy Secretary General of ActionAid Italy. “Denying boys and girls the right to education means precluding them the only way to a better future. For this reason it is necessary to redouble our efforts so that no one is left behind ».

In Italy

The project involves about 3 thousand students and aims to combat early school leaving redeveloping the physical spaces of four plexuses schools in the suburbs, between Bari, Reggio Calabria, Milan and Palermo, in areas characterized by severe social hardship and a high school dropout rate, well above the national average (13.1%) and the European target (10%).

In Malawi

Malawi has a sad record: it is one of the countries with the highest rate of forced marriages in the world, with approximately 42% of girls married before the age of 18 and 9% of child brides under the age of 15. The pandemic, with the closure of schools, has further aggravated the phenomenon. In Malawi ActionAid will build indoor classrooms and toilets for the primary school of Chikunkha, in the northern district of Nsanje, to ensure quality public education for over 6,000 pupils, forced to take lessons outdoors after the floods in 2015 made most of the classrooms unusable.

In six months of complete closure of schools, according to estimates by the Malawian government, at least 3 thousand child brides and at least 2 thousand early pregnancies have been registered in the Nsanje district alone (nationally, since the beginning of the pandemic pregnancies among girls have exceeded 40 thousand, over 13 thousand forced marriages). Families, further impoverished by the pandemic, resort to marriage as the only way to survive.

To turn the spotlight on these tragic realities, on 10 October in twenty squares between Milan, Rome and Naples, the volunteers of ActionAid propose the «Dream Book»: with a small contribution it will be possible to buy «the notebook that makes children’s dreams come true» and support the «Everyone at School!» campaign.

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