Protected in Palabek
In the Palabek refugee settlement in northern Uganda, girls and young mothers from South Sudan were walking up to 6 kilometres every day to reach the vocational school. A dormitory changed that.
The context
The Palabek refugee settlement, in the Lamwo district, is home to over 40,000 people — the majority women and children who fled the war in South Sudan. 86% of the population in Ugandan refugee camps is made up of women and minors. Only 25% of children actually manage to attend school.
The Salesians of Don Bosco built a vocational school at Palabek offering four-month courses in tailoring, carpentry, construction, agriculture and mechanics. There were 1,200 applications. The problem was something else: many girls lived 2 to 6 kilometres from the school, in precarious shared shelters with strangers, in a context where violence against women — along the route and inside the settlement — was widespread and difficult to document.
The project
In collaboration with ISP in Africa and the Salesians of Don Bosco, Casa Costa Foundation ETS funded the construction of a women's dormitory with 80 beds inside the school complex. Students could stay within the school throughout the week, without having to make the daily journey between their shelter and the school.
Each four-month term the dormitory hosted 80 girls between the ages of 14 and 25, for a total of 240 per year. Management was entrusted to the girls themselves, through a rotating system of responsibility. The Salesians ensured the presence of adults and educators.
At the end of the course, each student received a start-up kit to launch a small independent business.
Why we do it
Providing access to vocational education is not enough if the conditions to attend it do not exist. A safe dormitory is not a luxury — it is the condition that allows a girl to study, sleep and grow, without being exposed every day to risks that should not exist.
