This archive report was first published on 19 June 2020.
TECNO and UNHCR Join Forces to Support Education for African Refugee Children ¶
On June 19, 2020, TECNO, a leading smartphone brand, announced a new partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide quality primary education to thousands of refugee children in Africa.
The partnership commits TECNO to make a grant in support of the UNHCR's global education program, Educate A Child (EAC), which has been running since 2012.
Under Phase I of the partnership, TECNO has committed to providing financial support for over 6,700 refugee children from Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya.
The funds will go toward basic expenses including textbooks, tuition, examination fees, and school uniforms, with the hope that this support will encourage pupils to pursue higher education and continuous learning.
Established in 1991, Dadaab Refugee Camp is among the world's biggest refugee camps, hosting refugees displaced by conflict in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region.
According to UNHCR's 2019 Global Trends report, globally 79.5 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes, with 3.7 million refugees being children who have been deprived of regular schooling.
Education is a fundamental human right, one that is even more precious for refugee children, providing a safe space to protect them from violence, exploitation, underage marriage, and sexual or gender-based violence.
Education helps refugees develop resilience and hope, enabling them to rebuild their communities and acquire the knowledge and skills needed for jobs and self-sufficiency later in life.
With the current partnership, TECNO also commits to provide tablets to UNHCR this year, to support refugee children in Kenya refugee camps with connected learning in the context of COVID-19.
“Education is one of the best investments we can make to help refugees,” said Sivanka Dhanapala, the UNHCR's Representative in China. “Primary education is a critical tool to help refugee children overcome difficulties during displacement and contributes to durable solutions to displacement in the long term.”
Stephen Ha, General Manager of TECNO, added, “As a premium mobile phone brand deeply rooted in the African market, TECNO has upheld its philosophy ‘Together We Can’, and has long been committed to working with local communities to create social value.”
The company has also pledged to provide 50,000 surgical masks to UNHCR to help refugees and host communities cope with COVID-19 in Kenya refugee camps where health services are already under pressure.
