Education Day: Learning should not be a luxury
Education Day: Learning should not be a luxury
“When schools close, learning becomes a luxury, as 80% of learners in my district have no access to any online learning platforms, due to lack of network coverage and lack of mobile devices. As a result, children in rural areas become more marginalized, exposed to child labor, early marriages, hunger, teenage pregnancies and other forms of abuse. The prolonged school closures are shattering many hopes. This prompted me and my fellow CAMFED Learner Guides to act immediately to keep girls safe and learning.” - Patience Mkandawire, CAMFED Association leader, Zimbabwe
CAMFED Association members (graduates supported through school by CAMFED) may not have lived through a pandemic before, but they have faced crisis situations — from hunger to bereavement, discrimination to ill health — which threatened to push them out of school permanently. Their expertise in supporting the most marginalized girls to learn will be highlighted in a UNESCO panel discussion themed ‘Recover and Revitalize Education for the COVID-19 Generation’ taking place on Monday, January 25.
Our 157,005 leaders will be represented by Patience Mkandawire, a CAMFED Association member from Zimbabwe, part of our movement galvanizing community action for out-of-school students. Her work, alongside her fellow Learner Guides, focuses on narrowing the digital divide that renders children from rural communities without access to online learning:
CAMFED Association Learner Guides support continued learning in distanced groups, as well as over radio and WhatsApp - Read CAMFED's Coronavirus Update and Action Brief
Amid ongoing school closures, a teacher in Zimbabwe recorded this video - shared via a Learner Guide - to help a student with a question about the circulatory system.
Watch the panel live on Monday, 25 January 2021 at 8:20 a.m. EST, 1:20 p.m. GMT, 3:20 p.m. SAST:
In 2021, our community activists will continue to work with agility and ingenuity to ensure children keep learning, stay safe, and remain hopeful.