Adapting and Achieving during Covid

In the last year a lot has changed. You’ve heard that a lot. 

People have changed, education has changed and so have organisations. Have you noticed that some organisations have really stepped up in the last year and gone out of their way to help?

Uber and Pret have been offering free rides and meals for NHS staff, Nike supporting the safety precaution with their ‘Stay at home, play at home’ message. Burberry repurposed factories to make masks, helping toward the vaccine and have helped charities too. Many small local charities and community organisations have been providing meals to NHS staff and neighbours, checking on the vulnerable and elderly with daily calls and getting shopping for the people who have been shielding. Teachers have gone out of their way to offer support to their students, learning new technology and how to teach through it, working all hours to make sure every student is engaged and involved, some teachers have cycled round to check that children have food, and found ways to get technology and internet access to others.

Various apps like Zoom have been keeping us connected, and many others providing us with a bit of pleasant relief from the restrictions. Organisations such as Thinking Classroom have been hosting free Zoom Schools to get us all up to speed with online connectivity. As organisations have jumped to offer their services online this has actually increased access to some who have internet access but can’t travel.

We would like to share how we have also stepped up to help out over the last year too, and these are 5 ways that we have been helping a wide range of people in different parts of the world directly in response to the pandemic. Responding to the pandemic to further strengthen the support we offer in our three key areas of Access to Education, Resources for Educators, and Education Dialogue.


1. How we provided access to education support in response to Covid


We connected with our partners to see what challenges they had from Coronavirus that we could help directly with. It turned out that many students in the countries we work with did not have access to any education whilst in lockdown due to the digital divide. So we provided solar powered radios so that children in those remote areas could listen to their lessons which their governments were broadcasting by radio.


We also discovered an increase in violence against women, so we worked with our partners to set up Gender Based Violence workshops to bring this to light and work on ways to make women and girls safer in school.


In Cuba, women delivered the Positive Periods Programme via WhatsApp, connecting 20 women’s organisations who were learning new skills together during lockdown.


2. How we supported the Covid Stay Safe message with resources for educators


Lockdown has awoken a lively discussion about education and school. This is good for us as we are always keen to promote and foster conversation about education, and access to it. In support of the Coronavirus Stay Safe message, we published a resource pack called ‘Learning from Home’ which helped lots of parents and educators by pulling together all the useful resources they could be using for home learning into one place. We also used Social Media to connect with parents and educators, ask questions and offer practical support through our posts.


3. How we increased access to education online


As we were not able to attend events and give talks, we developed a Life Long Learning webinar series (free or by donation). We linked this webinar series to raising awareness of the digital divide, as not everyone in the world has access to online learning.

People across the globe were at home and were looking to learn about new things online.


We hosted storytelling sessions “Myths and Stories” with students from The Gambia, Haiti, Sierra Leone and the U.K. working together on-line to strengthen understanding between cultures. We also encouraged students in the UK and Poland to share poetry with each other.


4. How we helped people stay connected through an education dialogue


We thought at first that the webinars would just be informative, but we allowed ourselves to experiment and discovered that the post popular webinars were those that gave people the chance to be actively creative in ‘creating together’ webinars. In addition to webinars about Human Rights and Safeguarding we hosted webinars where the participants wrote poetry together, made art and showed each other what they had made, had discussions, watched films together with a live Q&A after. This has helped to build and strengthen our ‘Education for All’ community.


We have also created some Digital Charity Gifts for people to buy and share with their loved ones, this gives more people access to supporting us in a fun way, with a completely environmentally sound gift. We’ve had some lovely feedback to say that it has already helped people to connect, smile and say thank you.


5. How we helped people smile and gave hope


We increased our social media posts during lockdown to keep the conversation going about the positive impact we are having through the work we do. Our aim was to spread hope and positive messages about the successful impact we have been having to counteract some of the depressing statistics we have every night on our TV screens. We also posted ‘Smile Posts’ of children smiling and novelty treats like stop motion, and time lapse videos with positive quotes, so that there would be something to make people smile when they saw our feed. We now have a Good News email that is designed to encourage everyone to share positivity and hope. Ultimately, we need hope, and positivity, to make our dreams of education for all a reality.



T๏ปฟhe main point is this, Covid has been difficult for many, but many of us have made a stand for helping others and spreading hope and positivity. There are actually many fantastic things happening in the world right now. Many organisations, as well as us have been working away all year to make great things happen, because we want to encourage people to smile, have hope and most importantly continue learning and connecting with each other.


Thank you for reading and please leave a comment to let us know what was the best thing you saw happen last year.


Steve Sinnott • April 28, 2021

Headlines: Inspiration, humour and advice for school leaders - Competition 2025

By Ann Beatty • August 15, 2025
Mike Fleetham of Thinking Classroom has written a book " Headlines: Inspiration, humour and advice for school leaders ". A collection of original ideas, advice from professionals, quotes, and tips to support and inspire all leaders. Perfect for new and established leaders working in education, especially headteachers. "Being a headteacher is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an aeroplane." To Enter the Competition To win a copy of Headlines please share your inspiring education or life lesson in no more than 600 words. The winning article will also be published in our next edition of Engage. Send your words of inspiration to admin@stevesinnottfoundation.org.uk ๐Ÿ“… Deadline: 5th September 2025โ  Stuck on Ideas? Here are some questions and prompts to get you started! What’s the one lesson school didn’t teach you, but life did? Think of a moment that changed your path, what happened? What piece of advice has helped you grow the most? When did a challenge turn into an opportunity for you? What story from your life would inspire someone on the other side of the world? What’s the life lesson that unlocked your next chapter? โ  Your words could uplift, empower and be seen by many. Let your story inspire the world! ๐ŸŒ๐Ÿ’กโ  Good luck and we cant wait to read all the entries!

UNESCO ASPnet Schools Coventry

By Ann Beatty • July 8, 2025
This week our CEO Ann and Jude (SSF Ambassador) visited schools in Coventry and heard about the wonderful work that students are doing to foster peace and community connection, as part of Coventry Arts Week. We visited Lyng Hall school in the morning and met with Ms Hagan and four of the schools UNESCO ASPnet ambassadors. They told us all about their recent project. The students took their art and poetry to the 80th Anniversary symposium in Ypres and Dunkirk. They shared with us some of the poetry they had written together with the students on the field trip and some of their own poems too. They also shared their future plans for working with their local primary school on peace and community. We also had the privilege of joining Ms Hagans class where they were looking at Caliban’s tale. Here is one of the students work

A Get Moving Fundraiser - Ann's 60 Miles Walk

By Ann Beatty • June 30, 2025
For my birthday this year I had the honour to walk 60 miles (yes it was a big 0 birthday) over 3 days to support the essential work of the Steve Sinnott Foundation of which I am CEO. Education in its many forms is essential for all of us to thrive and make the most of life's opportunities. The Foundation works to ensure that as many children and adults as possible across the globe can access the human right of education. The plan was to walk with friends and supporters who I hoped would keep me smiling along the way and it felt like a good way to make use of the Foundation’s “Get Moving” campaign. Here's how my Get Moving Fundraiser went on the first day. The 13th June I started my walk in London by walking from Barnet to west Hampstead and visiting my sister at her shop at Tree of Life where I got served a nice iced coffee to keep me going.