28 September 2020
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Theirworld is a global children’s education charity committed to ending the global education crisis. It strives to give every child in the world - regardless of their background - the best start in life, a safe place to learn, and skills for the future.
Even before Covid-19, the world was facing an education crisis, with 260 million children not in education. With the pandemic, this number has now increased to around a billion - more than 60% of the world’s children - making the charity’s work even more vital.
With the support of players of People’s Postcode Lottery, Theirworld has helped ensure thousands of the most marginalised children were able to continue their learning throughout the pandemic.
One of the projects Theirworld supported included distance video learning and home activities to families and caregivers of almost 20,000 children in Lebanon with learning differences and special needs. Others included distributing learning materials to children in Uganda and Tanzania who were unable to access online information because they could not afford an internet connection and providing virtual summer activity packs to more than 500 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon.
Alongside these projects, Theirworld has used funds raised by Postcode Lottery players to:
- Set up coding clubs for girls to enable them to become coders and entrepreneurs. To date, 1,300 girls and young women across Africa and the Middle East have been trained in coding since the launch of Theirworld’s Code Clubs in 2016.
- Support refugees who had otherwise lost their dreams of running a business to enrol in a two-year MBA programme in partnership with Edinburgh Business School. In August, the students collected tablets that will allow them to access the bespoke learning platform and course materials for each of the MBA core courses.
- Initiate the ground-breaking idea of the double-shift system in Lebanese schools, where Lebanese children go to school in the morning and Syrian refugee children in the afternoon, using the same schools, teachers and curriculum. This has helped to provide education to more than 300,000 vulnerable and Syrian refugee children.
- Deliver training workshops to more than 1,000 teachers and counsellors to help them support almost 5,000 refugee children facing emotional difficulties or post-traumatic stress because of experiences in their home country's conflict.
Theirworld combines grassroots projects and campaigning with advocacy at the highest level to unlock change for marginalised children. This month, as global leaders prepared to meet virtually at the United Nations General Assembly, it launched a campaign to highlight the inequalities at the heart of the education crisis.
To support this message, Theirworld created a new game called Keys and Locks: The Education Game, which has been sent to global leaders. An adaptation of the classic children’s game Snakes & Ladders, it shows the barriers and opportunities faced by children worldwide when it comes to getting a quality education.