NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� Global conflicts from to the United States’ recent are .
One humanitarian duo wants to ensure conflict-stricken children get funding for an often-overlooked need: education. Under an agreement announced Wednesday, the LEGO Foundation committed $97 million to expand International Rescue Committee programs that use play to help millions of children learn and recover.
鈥淐hildren who are born in conflict have their childhood stolen from them,” IRC President David Miliband told The Associated Press. 鈥淏ut what鈥檚 remarkable about children is that if you give them a bit of their childhood back, they make the most of it. And this is about giving the best of childhood back.鈥�
The five-year partnership aims to reach 5 million children across East Africa and the Middle East. Who, exactly, they serve will change as conflicts evolve. LEGO Foundation CEO Sidsel Marie Kristensen pledged to focus on those 鈥渋n the most dire contexts.” Currently under consideration are Ethiopia, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Uganda.
Kristensen said the 鈥渢ruly agile鈥� framework is designed to bring play-based learning wherever it鈥檚 needed most, rather than funding individual place-based grants that might become outdated as conflicts evolve in real time.
鈥淚n the world we are living in right now, nobody knows honestly what is happening tomorrow or in two months,鈥� Kristensen said. 鈥淭hat (flexibility) is what we need right now.鈥�
The investment will introduce more classrooms to an IRC-led program called PlayMatters that offers training for teachers of 3-to 12-year-olds to integrate what they call 鈥減layful learning” into lessons. The goal is not to tell educators what they should teach but help tailor instruction to the needs arising in schools serving children traumatized by crises. Program leaders also act as a policy advocates for education funding at the national level, working with government officials to embed their materials into their curriculum.
Engaging kids to process their experiences with 鈥榩layful learning鈥�
At a primary school serving refugees in western Uganda鈥檚 Nakivale settlement, one teacher credits PlayMatters with reducing absenteeism. Sister Kasingye Secunda said attendance used to be an issue. Teachers try their best to make students “feel at home,鈥� she said. But many students don鈥檛 understand both the local language and English, the language of instruction.
Children learn colors through a game where they select mangoes, bananas and other fruits to share with their classmates. They build confidence through class presentations and develop leadership as they take turns guiding small groups through activities.
鈥淟earners enjoy the lessons,鈥� Secunda said. 鈥淭hey are eager to come to school.鈥�
From Ethiopia to Tanzania, a radio show helps children name their emotions through episodes offered in multiple languages featuring culturally familiar characters. PlayMatters Project Director Martin Omukuba said they are expanding such digitally delivered multimedia lessons. The radio show, for example, helps them remotely reach schools in South Sudan that are made inaccessible by flooding for half the year.
The LEGO Foundation provides flexible funding so that IRC can respond to the fluid nature of conflicts. A refugee class size can quickly jump from 25 to 150 students, Omukuba noted, creating new demands for sanitation, nutrition or other classroom needs not traditionally classified under education. Omukuba credited the LEGO Foundation for trusting them to move grant money around in emergencies.
鈥淲e need first to make sure that children are alive,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e can introduce the education when they are stabilized.鈥�
鈥楾rust-based鈥� collaboration aims to inspire others amid aid cuts
The partners first collaborated in 2019 when the LEGO Foundation committed $100 million to 鈥淎hlan Simsim,” the educational programming launched by IRC and the nonprofit Sesame Workshop with MacArthur Foundation support to and other regional conflicts.
Kristensen, who leads the Denmark-based corporate foundation that funds early childhood development, said they’ve been scaling up their donations in these settings. The LEGO Foundation recently announced a separate $30 million partnership with global funding collaborative Co-Impact to support locally led solutions to issues of learning and wellbeing among children impacted by conflict and crisis.
She wants Wednesday’s announcement to inspire greater collaboration among governments, civil society and the private sector. 鈥淭hat is so needed in a world right now where the development aid is decreasing,鈥� she said, referring to international assistance cuts by the United States and many European nations.
Those cuts have stretched the humanitarian system’s capacity over the past year. Already, Miliband said, provides 鈥渁 graphic demonstration of the short-sightedness of aid cuts for activities that are considered marginal.” He pointed to sanitation and handwashing programs in the Congo’s Ituri province, where the global health emergency is centered, that lost U.S. funding last year as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of international development.
鈥淲e warned at the time what the risk was,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd sure as night follows day, we end up with an under-detected Ebola outbreak.鈥�
International Rescue Committee officials similarly see early childhood development not as a luxury, but a necessary intervention to toxic stress that alters brain development and delays learning.
Education was an underfunded part of humanitarian responses even before wealthy countries slashed their aid budgets, according to Patty McIlreavy, the president and CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. 鈥淟ife saving鈥� assistance was too narrowly limited to 鈥渨hat do you actually need to keep the body alive,鈥� she said,” a definition that excluded 鈥渓ife sustaining鈥� efforts such as children’s education.
She pointed to Wednesday’s announcement as an example for donors, who often ask her how they can actually help in complex conflicts without clear ends in sight.
鈥淚t’s not our role as philanthropy to fix what’s broken in a country,” she said. “That’s politics. That’s bigger than us. But there’s so much we can do 鈥� even by offering six months or a year of education.鈥�
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