Protecting Education and Trees in Darfur

As the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, moves into its seventh year, displaced people continue to pour into urban areas seeking safety. Schools are stretched to their limit, leaving thousands of children without a seat in a classroom.

Catholic Relief Services believes every child has the right to an education. Since early 2005, we have built more than 80 permanent, 25 semipermanent and 280 temporary classrooms across West Darfur to help communities provide schooling for their children.

Growing cities, however, are encroaching on Darfur's fragile semiarid ecosystem. As urban populations swell, the surrounding landscape is losing its scant vegetation to families desperate for wood to build temporary shelters, cook meals and create charcoal to sell.

Communities also need wood to bake mud bricks for other construction needs, and a simple block-pressing machine offers a promising solution. By creating blocks made mostly from soil, CRS is conserving limited natural resources while helping schools build more permanent classrooms in Darfur to let children learn.

Neal Deles serves as CRS Sudan's northern area coordinator in West Darfur.