Caring ‘A Whole Awful Lot’ About Learning Amid COVID-19
USAID partners with civil society in Europe and Eurasia to support remote education
My 6-year-old daughter is sitting next to me as I write this blog. She has been out of school since March 16 and will not be returning to her classroom for the foreseeable future. Yet she is working diligently with her virtual classmates and learning about the importance of community helpers such as firemen and doctors. Unfortunately, many children lack the same level of access to their teachers and classmates during this pandemic.
COVID-19 has led countries around the world to shutter schools to prevent the spread of the virus. As a result of the global pandemic, the education sector has been devastated by school closures, leaving more than 1.68 billion children and youth out of school at the height of the pandemic, equaling more than 91 percent of enrolled learners worldwide. The impact of these missed educational opportunities will ripple through these societies and their progress towards democracy for generations to come.
Many countries, including those in Europe and Eurasia, are struggling to prevent 2020 from becoming a lost year for students. In the absence of policies to ensure continuous access to education and learning resources, countless children may withdraw from school. And the full weight of this patchy approach is falling on families struggling to access medical services and put food on the table.
This outcome is not inevitable. With USAID assistance, civil society organizations in Europe and Eurasia are helping to fill this critical need and ensure that children, the citizens of tomorrow, have access to educational services and support networks throughout the COVID-19 crisis. USAID believes that education is one of the most important tools for improving a child’s prospects, uplifting communities, and fostering self-reliance at every level.
One such effort is an initiative titled United We Stand, implemented by the New Horizons Foundation Lupeni (NHF). Supported by USAID through the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, this project is helping 120 primary school children from Romania and Moldova who are at high risk for dropping out of school or losing access to educational resources during the pandemic.
NHF helps these children by building support systems that include teachers, families, older students from youth-led community service groups, and local municipalities. Every child receives educational toolkits including basic supplies, reading materials, and a device to connect to the internet.
These supplies and the individual support networks are proving themselves to be critical to their educational development. Better yet, the schools and local authorities quickly chipped in to cover the internet subscription for several months and guide the parents in helping their children complete their school assignments and stay engaged.
“I like the lessons I have been attending very much. I feel important,” said Serafima, a first-grade student from Moldova, about the focused support she receives through the initiative.
“United We Stand is our call for solidarity for the benefit of all children’s learning during this pandemic. Discrepancies in access to learning have become more obvious now than ever before.
Many children lack not only the devices, but perhaps first and foremost the more experienced people’s support to access online learning.” — Maria Kovacs, NHF Representative
USAID and the Black Sea Trust are also supporting efforts to provide teachers in Moldova and Romania with devices to access the internet, online teaching resources and best practices, and coaching and training sessions to improve their skills and better tackle the challenges of working with students virtually.
The project, Consolidating Good Governance in Times of Crisis, is a partnership with Expert Forum Association (EFOR)’s School for Democracy, a support network of and for teachers. As part of the project, the School for Democracy teachers and EFOR also created a series of public speaking competitions for 130 students, ages 11 to 19, to help them build public engagement skills during a time of necessary physical isolation, while fostering relationships between them and teacher participants.
“What was the most rewarding [part of the public speaking competitions] is the fact that all the young people perceived the competition as a platform to make their voices heard on important problems in their communities.
Their speeches are about important issues for all of us — discrimination, poverty, mental health, climate change, civic involvement, voting and the need to reform the educational system.” — Cezara Grama, EFOR Representative
With USAID support, these young people are less likely to fall victim to some of the secondary impacts that COVID-19 is having on educational opportunities; they will continue to have access to resources and support networks. Both of these projects engaged vulnerable youth from diverse backgrounds, living outside of major cities and towns.
With support from civil society, the COVID-19 pandemic will not define the next generation of democratic citizens. With our help, they can continue to remain engaged and to learn.
These initiatives represent only a few examples of how USAID is helping our partners to innovate, expand access to education, and support teachers throughout the region and around the world.
For example, in North Macedonia, USAID and UNICEF partnered with the Macedonian Civic Education Center to help the Ministry of Education and Science develop a distance education system to complement and provide an alternative for in-person instruction, including helping them to bridge the gap when schools were closed between March and June.
And in Moldova, USAID, Sweden, and UKAID facilitated a partnership between Moldova’s Ministry of Education and Google to help students and teachers across the country utilize Google’s education applications. So far, over 10,000 teachers across Moldova have received access to Google’s G Suite for Education. Future Classroom Lab, the national center for digital innovation in education created with USAID support last year, has already trained over 100 regional trainers on how to use these tools. By 2021, they plan to train 15,000 teachers.
While COVID-19 may have turned the economy upside down and a few of my virtual work meetings are punctuated by my daughter’s laughter, I have never worried about her continued access to a high quality education. My hope is that, with support from USAID, other children in Europe and Eurasia will enjoy an equal opportunity to learn.
To quote Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” — a movie that is often on repeat in my combination home and office these days — “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Fortunately in Europe and Eurasia, there are countless civil society groups, teachers, parents, and others who do care a whole awful lot and will do everything in their power to ensure our children have access to educational opportunities. And USAID will continue to support them to do just that.
About the Author
Erin McCarthy is the Senior Civil Society Advisor for USAID’s Bureau for Europe and Eurasia. She has also read and watched Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” with her daughter so many times that she might have it memorized.
