Piloting the SLE assessment toolkit among Syrian refugees in Jordan

• In Event: Piloting a Safer Learning Environment Qualitative Assessment Toolkit in Four Countries

Proposal

134,000 of the 1.3 million Syrians in Jordan live in Azraq and Za’atari refugee camps. Over 60% of this camp population is under 25 and many have an incomplete education. Formal and non-formal education opportunities are available, but non-enrolment or dropping out is a reality for many, especially as children enter adolescence. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, barriers to education in the camps include poor infrastructure, long distances between schools, and for some children, ‘a sense of the pointlessness of education as they had limited hope for their future prospects.’ Child marriage and labour are common, and psychological trauma violence and exploitation impact many young Syrian refugees.

With the support of UNICEF Jordan, Relief International (RI) has been providing integrated non-formal education support to in and out-of-school Syrian refugee children and young people in Azraq and Za’atari Refugee Camps since 2013. This comprises remedial and supplementary classes, psychosocial support and lifeskills training in nine Makani Centres. Makani means “My Space” in Arabic and the concept offers a comprehensive approach (I am safe, I learn, I connect) to ensure that vulnerable girls, boys, men and women have access to quality services: education, skills and capacity building programmes and psychosocial support. They form a network of non-formal educational spaces across Jordanian refugee camps with a standardised approach and set of components. RI runs nine of these centres in Azraq and Za’atari refugee camps, and other agencies run additional centres.

It is in this context that RI embarked on piloting the SLE Qualitative Assessment Toolkit. The usefulness of the toolkit has been on a number of levels:
• The focus on breaking ‘safety and risk’ down into parts has allowed us to explore the theme in a much more in-depth way. It has resulted in confirmation of certain risks, but also the uncovering of unexpected and perceived risks impacting young people in the camps.
• The ethos of the toolkit is that it is aimed at ‘non-researchers’ and we embraced this. Whilst we included our in-country MEL team in the training element, the lead was taken by mid-level officers who had no experience of research. This has come with its own challenges, as progress was slow and is took time to understand the different steps; however, as a professional development opportunity, it has proven very powerful.
• We also took the approach to have mixed Jordanian-Syrian enumerator teams, which has been extremely beneficial, both for staff morale, and for a greater openness within the FGDs. In a context where the Syrian population is severely restricted in terms of work and decision-making, the tool took on an element of empowerment.
• The depth of the tools within the toolkit meant that this relatively inexperienced team had access to much more meaningful qualitative tools that we will continue to adapt and use.

Initial findings show that the biggest threats facing students are school-related gender-based violence and external threats, the majority of which are from harassment on the way to and from school. Breaking down the SRGBV threats further, key findings include the fact that peer-to-peer bullying is the most prevalent, with a number of students vocalising inter-community discord between students hailing from different areas of Syria. There is also a relatively large amount of abuse directed towards teachers from students. Turning to the external threats, these are fairly evenly split between violent and non-violent crime directed at students, such as physical assault and verbal intimidation and threats. Coping mechanisms include walking in groups to school, however, in the most extreme cases, this has led to students dropping out.

Finally, there is good potential for inter-agency collaboration during and post-pilot. One of the key challenges for RI was the translation piece. The tools are in English at the moment, whereas we needed everything in Arabic. Collaboration with organisations working in the same operational language proved helpful and could be explored further. Post pilot, the potential to share findings and explore similarities and differences, as well as responses would be extremely useful.

Author

• Amy Parker, Relief International