Speeches Shim
The goal of PEER in Central Asia is to improve domestic and regional water management for better cross-border cooperation and less water waste. PEER awards have a strong potential for developmental impact and are tailored to investigate sustainable transboundary water management covering non-conventional agricultural crop production, climate and environmental protection, and improving water and energy use efficiencies at the farm and river-basin levels.
Water resources management is one of the more complex challenges in the region. The five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), as well as Afghanistan, struggle to balance their limited water supplies with their growing populations and economies. USAID works to address these challenges by helping cross-border communities to cooperate with their neighbors while helping governments to better manage shared water resources. USAID’s work empowers communities to apply integrated water resources management principles and tools among various water stakeholders. Our regional work on transboundary water resources management has helped promote stability, economic prosperity, and healthy ecosystems in Central Asia and Afghanistan.
USAID/Central Asia’s Future Growth Initiative is designed to spur productive economic activity across Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan by increasing the competitiveness of high-growth industries, and providing jobs and incomes for Central Asia’s growing workforce, propelling the region toward self-reliance.
At USAID, gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the core of our development work. We strive to reduce gender disparities, gender-based violence and ensure women’s equal access to decision-making processes in society.
Through its Energy Policy Activity, USAID helps Bosnia and Herzegovina attract investment and integrate its energy market into regional and EU markets. USAID’s implementing partner for this five-year $7.5 million project is Advanced Engineering Associates International.
School councils (SCs) are the school bodies charged with monitoring quality of services, improved school management and accountability. SC members are elected and typically include representatives from the community. SCs are partially composed by parents and local leaders who are often adults who typically have limited access to information on how school councils should operate. SC members also lack the capacity to hold school staff accountable for providing quality education, starting with the effective use of available instruction time for improved learning outcomes.
Since the end of the civil war in 1992, the Government of the Republic of Mozambique (GRM) has been rebuilding its education system with the goal of providing universal access. Under the policy of free and compulsory primary education, the primary education net enrollment ratio has expanded from 52% in 1999 to 94% in 2016. This expansion has placed pressure on school management, teaching personnel, and the overall quality of classroom instruction, resulting in overcrowded multi-shift schools, high student/teacher ratios, and plummeting reading and math test scores.
Poverty and HIV/AIDS in Mozambique’s Zambézia Province have kept many children from staying in school. About 75% live in absolute poverty where the HIV prevalence rate of women and men age 15-49 is 15.1%. Poor teaching quality, long distances to schools, early pregnancy and marriage, gender-based violence, child labor and negative attitudes towards girls’ schooling are major challenges to the education of girls in Zambézia. Girls’ average completion rates in Zambézia are 23% percent at the upper primary level and 4% at the secondary level.
Education is a fundamental human right. In 2016, 94% of school-age children were enrolled in primary school, compared to 72% in 2003. Despite the increase in enrollment, education quality in Mozambique still remains a challenge, with low levels of competency in reading and writing at the end of the 1st and 2nd grades of primary education. As a result, less than five percent of students demonstrate grade-level reading proficiency by 3rd grade.
Comment
Make a general inquiry or suggest an improvement.