Education and Sustainability: innovating to build resilience in education
The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the fragility of many of the systems that we live by today. For the education projects supported by Theirworld, it is clear that in order to keep going - to be sustainable - they have had to be even more adaptable and resilient than usual. Given the challenging environments many of these projects already operate in, this has been no small feat.
In 2013, more than 500,000 school-aged refugee children were living in Lebanon and very few were in school due to being displaced by the Syrian war. Theirworld funded a team of experts to work with the Government, international agencies and NGOs to develop a solution. The result was an innovative ‘double-shift school’ system in Lebanon, which saw Syrian refugee children use schools from 2pm onwards, after the Lebanese school day had ended.
Today, Theirworld continues to support the delivery of the double-shift schools, working in collaboration with local NGOs and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education. However, due to political unrest and the Coronavirus pandemic, the 2019-2020 school year was severely disrupted in Lebanon. Parents became concerned their children would enter the next school year ill-prepared. To ensure that children were able to learn during school closures, we adapted our project activities so that teachers and special educators were able to reach children remotely via WhatsApp, with prepared videos and learning materials, and through Covid-19 safe distributions of activity packs at five pilot public schools.
Theirworld’s work to end the global education crisis is present in many countries around the world. For instance, another organisation Theirworld supports is the Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), which uses digital tools to deliver learning and skills programmes to young people and women in vulnerable communities in Kenya and Nigeria. YTF provides most of its digital skills programmes - such as Code Clubs for girls and Skills for Their Future initiatives - within school classrooms. So the Covid-19 shutdown meant delivering learning in different and innovative ways.
“We were thrown into this new world just like everyone else. We are used to pivoting but not to this scale,” said YTF founder and President Njideka Harry. The organisation’s short-term Covid-19 response included supporting 100 teachers at primary and secondary school levels in Nigeria and Kenya. Professional development workshops showed teachers how to move their class content online and share it with students.
“Our role has changed and the role of the teachers that we work with has changed,” said Harry. “They are no longer the sage on the stage, they are now the guide on the side, as the students themselves have to lead their own learning. When teachers in Nigeria and Kenya go to teacher training college, they are shown how to teach using a pen and paper, with barely a mention of digital. So it is something that many have never seen. Some had never used email”. For all the suffering and disruption it has caused, the pandemic has also provided the chance to give teachers new, sustainable skills.
Amid Covid-19, governments, aid agencies and businesses are facing recession, budget cuts and competing priorities. In response, Theirworld has launched The Key - a comprehensive information resource to help everyone make a clear and robust case for education.
The free digital report is crammed with messages, statistics, taking points and infographics about dozens of subjects where education plays a key role - from climate change and inequality to public health and financial literacy. With education spending under threat, it is more important than ever to protect education and make its provision as resilient and sustainable as it deserves to be.
Please take a look at www.theirworld.org.
BY REBECCA SHARKEY, CAMPAIGN AND ADVOCACY MANAGER, THEIRWORLD, FOR ENGAGE 2020
BY REBECCA SHARKEY, CAMPAIGN AND ADVOCACY MANAGER, THEIRWORLD • May 7, 2021
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.
