The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have led to a restructuring of educational policies in their objectives as well as in their mechanisms. In Senegal, a country classified among the 25 poorest countries in the world, the capacities of the educational system remain weak, in order to take charge of the right to education of all children.

These shortcomings affect the targets from vulnerable groups. Moreover, in a context of health and security crises, exacerbated by the scarcity of financial resources, the most viable policies should be those that promote inclusion and intersectorality. In addition, the pandemic has created new challenges that require innovation and creativity.

The project thus aims to strengthen the capacity of civil society to promote equity and collaborative learning by improving its participation for transparency and inclusion in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of educational policies. This requires the provision of diverse educational opportunities to ensure that diverse learning needs are met through inclusive and flexible offerings.

However, many children and youth still do not enjoy the right to education due to economic, environmental and socio-cultural constraints.

According to the latest National Education Situation Report (RNSE 2020), the system is still characterized by low completion rates (62.1% at the elementary level and 36.6% at the middle level). By gender, completion is higher for girls (40.8%). The Gross Enrollment Rate (GER) at the elementary level is 85.9%. In addition, there are approximately 1,500,000 out-of-school children (COSYDEP 2O16 and USAID 2017 studies). This state of affairs is due to a lack of institutional and technical capacity on the part of the State and other actors, including civil society organizations (CSOs). In addition, there is the lack of relevance and inclusion in the approaches, but also the compartmentalization of interventions, which is an obstacle to the achievement of the SDGs.

This intervention builds on the successful results of the first EOL phase (2020-2021). It will build on the achievements by improving their quality, increasing their reach and deepening their impact. The initiative directly targets CSOs, active in the promotion of human rights, in particular the right to education. State institutions and local governments will also be indirect beneficiaries due to their responsibilities in service delivery.

This capacity building project will equip civil society to identify bottlenecks for effective consideration of quality education for vulnerable groups through intersectorality and more methodical monitoring of the inclusion and transparency of the governance of the education system. This project will lead to a better organization and greater capacity of civil society to influence public policies at both national and local levels with more relevant contributions and higher impact on decisions related to educational policies.

The first phase of the project was implemented in 2020-2021 with support from Education Out Loud of 299.869 USD.