Send My Friend launch campaign to keep young people learning
Send My Friend to School is a UK civil society coalition of international development NGOs, teachers’ unions and charities. It brings together young people, politicians, teachers, civil society and the media in joint campaigning to demand quality education for all children across the globe.
Supporting a safe return to school through, for example, risk assessments, providing better school hygiene and building additional classrooms to make social distancing possible.
Building back better so that education systems are better than they were before the pandemic and are more resilient to shocks and changes in case of future crises or emergencies. This requires greater investment and global leadership.
A quality education is critical to children’s safety, opportunities and ability to reach their potential. However, education around the world, and the hope that it brings, is facing a generation-defining emergency: COVID-19.
Every child has the right to a quality education, but the COVID-19 pandemic has obstructed this right on an unprecedented scale. To stem the pandemic, in 2020, schools closed their doors to an estimated 1.6 billion learners globally.1
School closures amid the pandemic have compounded the already dire progress on Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) - the global commitment to guaranteeing a quality education for every child. 258 million children were already out of school before COVID-19 struck, including 130 million girls, and UNESCO has predicted zero progress on reducing this number by 2030 (the deadline for SDG4).2 COVID-19 has been one of the greatest challenges of our lifetimes. However, we now have an opportunity to influence change and ensure all children receive the education that is their right. With the international G7 and COP26 conferences taking place in the UK in 2021, the UK government has the chance to be a global leader and take centre stage in driving sustainable and resilient progress towards quality education for all.
In practical terms this means:
Keeping children learning
by making home learning inclusive so that it meets the diverse needs of the poorest and most marginalised children. This is an important investment so that quality learning can still take place when schools are closed.
Supporting a safe return to school through, for example, risk assessments, providing better school hygiene and building additional classrooms to make social distancing possible.
Building back better so that education systems are better than they were before the pandemic and are more resilient to shocks and changes in case of future crises or emergencies. This requires greater investment and global leadership.
These tasks are the responsibility of the entire global community and not one country alone. However, the UK Government has the unique opportunity to set an example and lead other countries when it sets its new priorities and budgets for international aid, and meets other world leaders at the G7 and COP26 conferences taking place in the UK during 2021.
Therefore, Send My Friend to School are calling for urgent action now to ensure that all children everywhere can keep learning during and after the pandemic. Tackling the problems caused by the pandemic will also help to solve many of the other problems too.
To do this, we’re asking schools and young people to take part in the Keep All My Friends Learning campaign
– anyone can take part, whether you’re in school or at home, and the resources are free to download. There are some really interesting case studies, a fun activity and instructions on how to tell your MP about the campaign and why it’s important. All you need to do is follow this link and download your campaign pack to start making change!
1 UNESCO (2020), “Global Education Coalition”, available at: https://bit.ly/2JgPCnV (accessed: 8th Sept 2020)
2 UNESCO (2019), “Launch of the SDG4 2019 Data Digest”, available at: https://bit.ly/3mtUfcz (accessed: 8th Sept 2020)
BY HANNAH NIXON, SEND MY FRIEND TO SCHOOL CAMPAIGN MANAGER, FOR ENGAGE 2020
BY HANNAH NIXON, SEND MY FRIEND TO SCHOOL CAMPAIGN MANAGER • May 14, 2021
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.
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
