Wednesday 04 / December / 2024
UNICEF Oman recently travelled to Kumzar, a village in Oman, which is only accessible by boat, to meet schoolchildren as part of their educational development programmes.
Kumzar was one of the settlements in Musandam recently visited by Lana Al Wreikat, the UNICEF representative to Oman, and HH Sayyida Dr Muna Al Said, the Assistant Vice Chancellor for International Cooperation at Sultan Qaboos University, as UNICEF launched their Child Friendly Education programme to help schoolchildren learn better.
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“The villages of Kumzar are only accessible by boat but UNICEF Oman, the Ministry of Education and HH Sayyida Dr Muna Al Said, are reaching today to launch the Child Friendly Education and engage in conversations with local communities to learn their perspectives and needs,” said Al Wreikat, on March 6, the date of their arrival in Kumzar.
Al Wreikat also visited other schools in Musandam, including the Qida School in Khasab, the capital of the northern governorate, saying, “Children are our future! We have had a great day with HH Sayyida Dr Muna Al Said, engaging with students and teachers from the Qida Basic Education School in Musandam. Let’s continue to work together for every child.”
She added, “It was wonderful to meet young students at Hamza bin Abdulmutallab School in Lima, where they were implementing a curriculum for excellence and learning life skills and modern technologies such as hydroponic farming.”
While there, UNICEF actively engaged with students in the classroom and looked at the work they did, so as to better understand how they could develop programmes that could better help them learn.
Other schools visited by UNICEF were the Amna bint Wahab School in the Wilayat of Bukha, which borders the United Arab Emirates, and the Hamza bin Abdulmutallab Primary School in Lima, another town in Musandam.
“We want to recognise the efforts of Amna bint Wahab School in Musandam for focusing on one of the sustainable development goals – achieving gender equality and empowering all girls and women in Musandam,” said the organisation. “UNICEF Oman believes that quality pre-primary learning is critical to a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development.”
“We were pleased to visit Hamza Bin Abdulmutallab Primary School in the Governorate of Musandam, together with HH Sayyida Dr Muna Al Said and the Ambassador of UNICEF in the Sultanate to follow up the school’s efforts in the initiative of the Child Friendly Education Programme,” added Dr Auhoud Saeed Rashid Al Balushi, an education development specialist with a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Warwick, and an Oman-based consultant for DERASAT, the Bahrain Centre for Strategic, International and Energy Studies.
Located in Oman’s northern governorate of Musandam, Kumzar is one of Oman’s final settlements before its maritime border with Iran, with which it jointly shares control of the Strait of Hormuz, and is perched on the very edge of the Musandam Peninsula. Kumzar is about 25.9km from the regional capital of Khasab, is also about 366km from the national capital of Muscat, as the crow flies.
The Governorate of Musandam is Oman’s northern bastion, and is separated from the rest of the Sultanate by the United Arab Emirates. Khasab is nearly 550 km from Muscat, and the governorate is split into four wilayats - Khasab, Dibba, Bukha and Madha.
The exclave of Madha lies inside the UAE, and is completely surrounded by the Emirate of Fujairah.
