Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
253
Zakat Fund is considered an Islamic obligation, every Muslim is required to donate 2.5 % of his
assets per year and it does not exclude non-Jordanians as potential beneficiaries.
The Jordan Hashemite Fund for Human Development, through the Jordan Food Bank, offers in
kind assistance for people below the poverty line.
International organizations and NGOs. As a response to the Syria crisis, international
organizations and NGOs have established social protection programs geared towards refugees.
They also benefit Jordanians since the Jordanian Government stipulated that either 30% or 50%
of beneficiaries should be vulnerable Jordanians, depending on the type of support537 . Under
the social protection umbrella, there are a few cash and in-kind transfer programs to support
the livelihoods of refugees: UNHCR (cash, in kind), UNICEF (cash), Norwegian Refugee Council
(emergency, cash for work), Danish Refugee Council (emergency, livelihoods, special needs),
Oxfam (up to three months), UNRWA (cash and in-kind). An example of cash transfer that
benefited access to schools is the UNICEF Jordan Child Cash Grant (CCG).
Violence in schools. As seen earlier, violence in schools was an often cited reason to drop out,
especially in boys schools. It was recently evaluated and the campaign was shown to have had
significant effects on curbing violence in schools538. Se
537 ODI (2017)
538 Evaluation report should be officially available in July 2017.
Box 11 UNICEF Child Support Grant
Goal. The Child Support Grant was initiated in February 2015 to assist the most vulnerable
Syrian refugee families with children living in host communities.
Process. Using the registration process of UNHCR, UNICEF provided JD20 per child per month
(capped at JD75 per family) unconditionally and reached out to families via SMS in order to
inform caregivers that assistance is meant to be used to meet children’s needs. SMS that the
assistance is intended to cover the basic needs of their children.
Results. The monitoring and evaluation of the project has shown that the families are
committed to education, with enrolment rates increasing 4 percentage points over the 3 waves
of data collection, ending at 83% of school-aged children enrolled in education of some form.
The CCG enabled families to increase expenditures on child-specific needs. However, some
negative coping strategies remained and even deteriorated, likely a result of reasons external to
the program.
Source: UNICEF (2015) A Window of Hope