Blog

[Report] Read the latest evidence digest on ageing and disability inclusion

The Disability Inclusion Helpdesk, hosted by Social Development Direct aims to deliver tangible outcomes to improve the lives of people with disability; provide evidence-based understandings of ‘what works’ to deliver results for people with disabilities; ensure data and evidence produced leads to increased action and investment.

SDDirect’s team of in-house experienced researchers work alongside over 80 senior disability inclusion experts with experience across different themes, sectors and geographies to provide advice on disability inclusion in development, education, Fragile Conflict Affected Settings (FCAS) and humanitarian settings.

The latest evidence digest produced by the Disability Inclusion Helpdesk on Ageing and Disability Inclusion is now available to download. It is number 15 in the series.

An easy-read version is also available.

**Deadline expired** [Hybrid event] Don’t miss the global launch of the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education in Uruguay ~ July 2023

Date: 26 – 27 July 2023
Location: Montevideo, Uruguay and online

Co-hosted by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay and Ceibal Foundation, the global launch of the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education will take place in a hybrid format and will bring together ministers of education, experts, academics, representatives of civil organizations to reflect on the main findings and recommendations of the GEM Report 2023. This will be the first time in the history of the GEM Report that the global launch will take place in Latin America.

With the help of over 200 PEER country profiles on technology and education, the event focuses on the opportunities and challenges for the use of technology in education, and the conditions that need to be met for technology to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on education.

For more information and to register for the event check out the website.

[Report] World Bank study recommends ways to increase access to assistive technologies for children in Indonesia

A report entitled ‘Assistive technologies for children with disabilities in inclusive and special schools in Indonesia‘ by The World Bank and supported by funding from the Inclusive Education Initiative addresses a knowledge gap around assistive technologies, policy and access.

The report recommends a shift in service delivery models to address quality issues in policy
agenda and implementation.  It suggests changes to be made at central, local and school level, including to:
1. Develop regulations and guidelines on the use of and support for AT;
2. Improve the procurement process of AT and expand multi-sectoral collaboration;
3. Develop teacher training on AT and strengthen supporting mechanisms.

[Advocacy] Join the campaign #actforearlyyears

The world’s youngest children deserve better.

Without the right early years support, children fall behind even before they have started school. The early years is when inequality sets in. Millions of the world’s children go without the quality care and early learning they require.

If you feel it’s time to Act For Early Years too – sign a letter to world leaders and read more about the campaign from Theriword.

[Advocacy] Children’s writing sends a powerful message to world leaders to #actforearlyyears

How do you get world leaders to sit up and take notice of the plight of very young children? One way is to give those children a voice and put them at the centre of a global campaign.

That’s what Theirworld has done with Act For Early Years – a major campaign to tackle a worldwide crisis by calling for urgent quality childcare and preschool learning for every child.

They knew that giving children under five the opportunity to have their say would be a powerful way of getting through to leaders and governments who are letting them down.

Theirworld worked with partners and the brand studio Saboteur to create a special font that uses children’s writing and features in our Act For Early Years report and campaigning. Children’s drawings and doodles also help to reinforce the message.

Take a look at how the font was created and why it’s having a big impact.

 

 

[Resources] Online course on MHPSS in and through EiE

This course looks at how Education in Emergencies (EiE) programmes can incorporate activities to actively tackle the potential psychological and emotional distress experienced by teachers and students in emergency situations.

This course unit is part of the full Education in Emergencies (EiE) Online pathway endorsed by INEE

This course is also available in FrenchSpanish and Arabic.

 

Rethinking the way we work – Part 2

“Around the world, people are rethinking their ways of working: whether due to the increasingly incandescent disaster that is human-driven climate change or the more recent outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). This is an opportunity to develop and implement better ways of working and deliver greater, more sustainable impact that decolonises existing power relations.”

Climate change – rethinking the way we work’ by Rachel Bowden with Juliette Myers and Anise Waljee, EENET, 15 March 2020

Rethinking who the experts are

Three years have passed since we published the blog entry quoted above. The COVID-19 pandemic became an opportunity for EENET to radically change the way it worked. For almost two years all our work was done remotely, through online meetings, emails, and text messaging. The change that excited us was the increased opportunity to work with, support and mentor local expertise.

EENET has always been committed to supporting education stakeholders, consultants, advocates and trainers within the countries where we work to become more experienced and skilled. We used to ask donors and clients for budgets and timelines that would enable our international consultants to work alongside and mentor national counterparts, with the longer-term ambition of reducing or removing the need for international consultants in many activities. But some clients and funders did not want to pay for the extra cost or take the extra time, preferring only to fund the international consultants’ costs and leaving it to ‘someone else’ to support national expert capacity building.

When COVID-19 stopped all international travel, suddenly the vital importance of national consultants, advocates and trainers could not be ignored. We invested a lot of energy (and client/donor funds) into quickly developing ways to remotely support and mentor a range of personnel in countries where we were involved in projects so that they could carry out work previously done by visiting international consultants. Of course, it would have been easier if we had been able to work consistently on this process over a long period before the pandemic, rather than it being an emergency measure.

Discussions around power relationships and institutional inequality in humanitarian and development work are not new. The discourse received impetus in May 2020 when the killing of George Floyd by US police spotlighted institutional racism around the world. And the pandemic offered an unusual opportunity to interrupt further the balance of power among experts in development and humanitarian work. But where are we heading now?

International consultants can travel again, and NGO and government budgets are squeezed by economic crises. What will happen if clients/donors revert to the pre-2020 routine of employing international consultants and strive to avoid the extra cost and time often needed to simultaneously intensively mentor local expertise? What if they choose only to work with the (usually less expensive) national consultants, advocates and trainers who were fast-tracked into new roles during the pandemic but refuse to take (financial) responsibility for further professional development for them?

EENET calls on donors and NGOs to value the (perhaps unplanned and unintended) progress of interrupting the reliance on international consultants and find ways to keep investing in challenging the balance of power among inclusive education experts.

Rethinking our environmental impact

The pandemic made it much easier for EENET to move towards its environmental policy ambitions – stopping harmful international travel was easy when no travel was allowed! In 2022, travel fully resumed and projects expected international consultants to return to in-person work. This reignited dilemmas for EENET around how we move towards reducing our carbon footprint.

We are also challenged to rethink EENET’s core networking and information-sharing activities. Since we were established in 1997, we have prioritised providing hard-copy materials to education stakeholders considered ‘hardest to reach’. Free printed materials for those without internet access is something we still passionately support. But how do we square that with the environmental impact of printing and sending materials around the globe? And how do we afford it now that printing and international postage and courier costs are soaring? But if we don’t maintain hard-copy distribution, how can we reach our important offline audience, because EENET cannot single-handedly fix the digital divide?

We haven’t got all the answers! But here are some steps we have taken:

Localised printing (i.e., funding partners or cost sharing with partners in certain countries to print and distribute copies of Enabling Education Review). The printing is not necessarily cheaper, but we save money on international shipping and reduce our environmental impact. The downside is that this passes an extra workload to the selected partners who must get quotes, supervise the printing process and then distribute the copies. It also means we do intensive distribution in a few countries rather than dispersing copies across many countries.

USB flashdrives. We have distributed hundreds of flashdrives containing our video training packages, all editions of Enabling Education Review, and dozens of other inclusive education guides, training packages and posters. In a tiny package, we can distribute an entire library which the recipient can access without needing the internet. The recipient still needs a computer or tablet, of course. The downside is that flashdrives can be subject to customs duties on arrival, although we try to pre-pay duty wherever the option exists, and flashdrives often get ‘lost’ in the postal system.

You can order an EENET flashdrive through our online shop.

Hand-delivery. We have always ensured that consultants carry as many EENET materials as possible when they visit a project. These days paying for a little excess luggage on a flight can be cheaper than sending a large package by post or courier. If you are based in the UK, visit education projects in other countries, and would like to take some free EENET materials to distribute to your partners/colleagues, please contact us to make arrangements.

Constant reflection and action for change

During our AGM in 2022, we discussed how to continue reducing our carbon footprint, how to question assumptions around international consultants’ travel to projects, and how to push for change. We recognised that change will be incremental, and probably there will be steps forward and back. But the climate crisis and the urgent need to challenge unequal power relations in development and humanitarian work mean EENET will continue to reflect critically on everything we do and will remain committed to having difficult conversations with donors and clients.

 

Annette Rebentisch and Ingrid Lewis, EENET

May 2023

 

[Advocacy] Watch the webinar on ‘Social norms and girls education in Sierra Leone’

The United National Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI) held a webinar in June 2023 to discuss their latest publication entitled  ‘Social Norms and Girls’ Education in Sierra Leone – Insights and Recommendations Report’.

The report includes the findings of a study undertaken by UNGEI and Dalberg on social norms and girls’ education in Sierra Leone. The community-based research looked into the social determinants, norms, and perceptions hampering girls’ education in Sierra Leone and identified positive pathways to transform social norms and help girls and boys fulfil their dreams.

The webinar recording and a summary of the report are now available for download.

[Advocacy] Learn about what went on at the Education World Forum 2023

This year’s Education World Forum (EWF) was held in May 2023 in London. The theme was ‘New Beginnings: Nurturing Learning Culture, Building Resilience, Promoting Sustainability. Stronger, Bolder, Better Education by Design’.

EWF 2023 addressed how education has changed and what we have learned from the recent disruption and responses and considered longer term challenges and changes. The event also focused on education’s sustainability, as well as its potential to both aid understanding and contribute to global sustainability.

The event was also used to launch the new 2023 Cost-Effective Approaches to Improve Global Learning – Smart Buys report authored by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP).

Check out EWF 2023 event photos and videos.

Video #1 / Video #2 / Video #3 / Video #4 / Video #5.

**Deadline expired** [Webinar] World Bank side event: comprehensive approaches to disability inclusion ~ 12 June 2023

Date: Monday 12 June 2023
Time: 6:30 PM to 7:45 PM EDT
Location:
United Nations Headquarters, New York and online
World Bank Side Event | COSP 2023
Comprehensive Approaches to Disability Inclusion
This event will showcase several technical pieces supported by the World Bank on digital development and accessibility, inclusive health, education and women with disabilities. The reports/toolkits presented work to centre the lived experiences of people with disabilities and the broader ecosystem around them, helping to ensure all decision-making processes are participatory and the voices of those who matter the most are amplified.

It will take the form of a panel discussion followed by an interactive discussion with the audience.

Register on the website for more information!

(International Sign and Closed Captions will be provided).