In June 2016, the Dallaire Initiative was contacted by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) to discuss the development of a training toolkit to accompany the Safe Schools Declaration. The Dallaire Initiative was then contracted to develop a training toolkit that could be tested and used to educate the military on the Safe Schools Declaration implementation and adherence. As a direct result of the secondment of Mr. Gbow in AMISOM, we were able to have his input into the toolkit and the testing of the toolkit with the AMISOM troops. The final toolkit was officially presented in Buenos Aires in March 2017 and was received on a global scale with overwhelming success.

As part of AMISOM’s work to conduct operations in accordance with the Safe Schools Declaration, on July 11th, 2017, AMISOM handed over, to the Federal Government of Somalia, the Somali National University campus in Mogadishu which had been occupied by the Burundian contingent of AMISOM for the past 10 years. This important step in restoring Somalia’s educational infrastructure was aided by Mr. Gbow’s work on the ground.