South Asian Flooding Puts 1.8 Million Children Out of School
India, Nepal, and Bangladesh
September 29, 2017
Indians wade through a flooded street during heavy rain showers in Mumbai on August 29, 2017. (Image Source: theguardian.com)
August 29, 2017
Heavy rain from a monsoon has caused the finical capital of India, Mumbai, to come to a halt. More than 1,200 deaths have been reported as a result of the flooding. The devastation has destroyed more than 18,000 schools. This is leaving 1.8 million children out of school. A charity, Save the Children, warned that hundreds of thousands of children could fall out of the school system permanently.
“From our experience, the importance of education is often under-valued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backward,” a general manager for Save the Children, Rafay Hussain stated.
He continued to go on and say, “We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”