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.

The 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.

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Steve Sinnott • Apr 28, 2021

Walking for Education For All

By Nicolet Nguyen & Becky Brace • 24 Oct, 2024

We both love London and walking, and this year, in honor of The Steve Sinnott Foundation's 15th Anniversary we have decided to embark on this journey. We planned to complete the 10KM walk along the river Thames, passing by many iconic London attractions on the way. We wanted to raise funds, and awareness, to ensure that every child worldwide, can have the opportunity to go to school, as well as adults too. It was an amazing experience and we enjoyed each other's company on luckily a very sunny day! “Since working for the Foundation I have witnessed firsthand the impact it has in supporting young people develop essential life skills by working to ensure provision of quality education for all children worldwide. The ripple effect of this education is truly remarkable as students go on to empower and educate others.” - Nicolet “I’ve been friends with Nicolet since we were kids, and I appreciate her and support her in any way that I can! She does amazing work for the Steve Sinnott Foundation and I want to be able to support her in this as well. A sponsored walk would not only be something we can accomplish together, but the fact that our efforts could go some way to making a difference for children around the world made it very worthwhile.” - Becky

Charities Working Together

By Ann Beatty • 29 Aug, 2024

H'arts in Mind is an inclusive mental health Arts charity run by people with lived experience. They support people with mental health or physical challenges who have an interest in Art. The Steve Sinnott Foundation (SSF) is an international education charity also based in Hertfordshire. The foundation is working with teachers and educators to deliver projects that progress the achievement if Sustainable Development Goal 4 - ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life long learning opportunities. Kim Rasit CEO and founder of H'arts in Mind met up with Ann Beatty CEO SSF to see how two small local charities might support each other. They decided they would work together to develop a space in the art gallery for future artists or others to exhibit in the space. SSF would be the first exhibition to test out the space. The exhibition took place August 21st to 25th and we are really pleased to report it was a great success. SSF provided workshops on Storytelling, Jewellery Making and Vision Board and Well-being as well as exhibiting their work on Positive Periods and Preventing Gender Based Violence.

UNESCO ASPnet schools’ contribution to the UK

By BY SAARAH RAHMAN • 08 Jul, 2024

The Foundation has been working in partnership with UNESCO since 2015 and Ann Beatty our CEO is the UNESCO ASPnet Co-ordinator in the UK. There are 145 schools in the programme and Coventry City is currently supporting all schools in the city with the opportunity of accreditation. In January, Warwick University and Coventry City Council hosted an event at the House of Commons to celebrate UNESCO ASPnet schools’ contribution to the UK. Saarah Rahman who helped organise the event, is currently studying at the University of Warwick in her final year, reading politics and international studies. Saarah shares her thoughts on ASPnet and her personal journey in education. I believe that being a part of UNESCO ASPNET and the Hidden Heroes project will help to lift hundreds of schoolchildren out of educational deprivation. This is an issue that I have personally grown up with my entire life. Educational deprivation is a very personal topic for me, as someone who originates from Tower Hamlets and as a British Bangladeshi Muslim, I am already socially and economically hindered. I went to your average underperforming state school, where I was never able to take part in programmes which helped to improve my confidence and critical thinking skills, as well as deepen my awareness of the world around me. I was always stuck in a bubble at school, believing that students like me would never be able to leave Tower Hamlets; that my whole life would only start and end here, in this small pocket of London. From not having a laptop until I was seventeen and being on Free School Meals when I was younger, I have faced the brunt of deprivation in education. It was when I got into The University of Warwick that I realised the deprivation gap between me and my classmates was much greater than it seemed. My classmates had opportunities to take part in initiatives such as Model UN at school, Pupil Parliament, and so many other extracurriculars that they had at their disposal, because of the type of funding their school during sixth form and secondary had received. Meanwhile, I had to scout for my extracurricular opportunities during school, alongside the challenge that they had to be free. The disparity gap is prominent in who runs for execs or higher student positions, and the common denominator between these types of students is they had leadership positions and extracurriculars handed to them during their time in compulsory education. They were given the confidence at an early age to apply for these roles inside and outside of the University, which will ultimately lead to them being in a better position to take up opportunities. This is why I am a massive advocate for initiatives such as UNESCO ASPnet, because giving young people the confidence to explore social issues alongside critical thinking skills, will boost their confidence in academic and nonacademic settings. Working-class, underprivileged students are always in competition with students who have been given the resources to enrich their education throughout their lives, which shows in their confidence in applying for and receiving opportunities throughout their time inside and outside of higher education. Hopefully, with initiatives such as Hidden Heroes and UNESCO, we finally give underprivileged students the stepping stones they need to get out of their comfort zone and take up opportunities. To find out more about UNESCO ASPnet in the U.K. and how your school can join, visit https://www.stevesinnottfoundation.org.uk/unesco-aspnet