According to the United Nations, school closures in 85 countries to contain the spread of Covid-19 are disrupting the education of over 776 million learners globally. Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal and other countries across sub-Saharan Africa have closed schools to prevent further spread of the virus. We have been thinking about what Ubongo can do to help communities and families support kids’ continued education and learning as more and more schools are closed. We’ve had many conversations with people across these countries who are concerned about the short-term and long-term effects that this will have on the pre-existing learning crisis across the continent. These are the steps that we as Ubongo have committed to taking at this time.
- We are offering our library of TV and radio edutainment content- as well as public service announcements and educational videos to support health and hygiene– for free, to any broadcasters and partners who can share it with communities in need. Please contact kriyen@ubongo.org for more details on the terms and conditions as well as links to the content.
2. We officially launched our Ubongo Toolkits platform this month, and we are working to populate it with even more content and guidance for caregivers to use at home to support learning for kids. Ubongo Toolkits is a large library of quality, African-made early learning materials and educational resources for kids aged 0 – 14, covering various topics from early numeracy, pre-literacy, and social and emotional skills to engineering, science, and technology. These materials are currently available in Kiswahili and English, and we’re also in production on versions in Kinyarwanda, Hausa, Kikuyu, Luo, and Chichewa. These toolkits serve as teaching aids for the purpose of improving the quality of instruction with play-based visual and audio learning. We have arranged the resources according to subjects and themes, so it’s easy for you to find what you are looking for. Just follow this link to log in/sign up, and explore and download our resources, free of charge.
3. We are also working on mapping our content and other learning resources (ebooks, apps, worksheets) against the education curriculums (pre-primary to grade 7) in African countries where schools have been closed. We are currently focusing on Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania as priority markets. This will help families quickly find content that’s relevant to their kids’ grade level and better plan lessons at home. We will add the curriculums to the Toolkits platform on an ongoing basis.
4. We are also working with other education and learning partners to create an inventory of learning resources to distribute on our YouTube channels, Ubongo Toolkits platforms, and broadcast channels.
5. We In the long-term, we plan to create even more health-related content that will support public awareness and practices around hygiene and infectious disease prevention.
This is just the start, and now more than ever, we need to come together as ambassadors for children across Africa and support out-of-school kids continued learning at home. Please share this with your network and all relevant parties. We will share updates on the progress and any other initiatives that we and other partners make around this issue. Remember, “we do it for the kids”!
