Charity safely and seamlessly continued to educate all 20,000 of its pupils throughout Covid Crisis, due to smart running of their schools

The charitable organisation, World Villages for Children (@World_Villages), have been extremely successful in keeping all their 13 schools open and safe from Covid in order to continue to educate 20,000 of the world’s poorest children, whose only means of escaping poverty is to gain the education and housing given at the schools.

As schools set to re-open this week, many children will be facing two significant challenges. Firstly, the need to adapt to a new physical and social environment, to ensure their complete safety and protection against the continued threat of Coronavirus.  Secondly many children have been out of full-time education for months, and now need to play catch up as they enter the next academic year.  

However, some educational focused organisations have not put their pupils through the challenge of playing catch up; ensuring safe, continued and full-time education for their children throughout the last few months. Once such organisation is the charity World Villages for Children. Their focus is on educating the world’s poorest children; ensuring they have the necessary skills to get out of, and remain out of poverty

• With education being the only means for thousands of the charity’s children to permanently escape their lives of poverty; it was absolutely crucial that the schools remained capable of continuing to educate the children and keep them safe.

• During the last few months, the charity has achieved a remarkable feat by ensuring that over 20,000 of its children in over 13 schools have continued to have a full-time education in a 100% safe environment. 

• Not a single child or staff member during this time has been affected by Covid nor taken ill and this is completely down to the environment that has been created within the schools. As a result, all the children from the ages of 11-18 have been able to carry on with their full-time studies and recreational activities safely. 

Measures that World Villages for Children have supported at the Sisters of Mary schools include:

• The use of efficient technology and proficient co-ordination to ensure that all 20,000 children have continued their lessons via conference call with their teachers
• Utilising the skills of the most senior students as ‘student teachers’ to not only boost their skills but also keep the younger year groups on track with the curriculum
• Running exams as usual with the help of exam texts set by the teachers remotely and marked by them remotely
• The few teachers who have come back into the schools (mainly in the Philippines) have been temperature checked daily to check the state of their health
• Regular temperature testing of children within the school 
• Family grouping of the children at school and comprehensive mask use over the last five months so children have had a chance to get used to the process