Keep 1,000 Children Safe & Learning during COVID19

School Leaders are pillars of our communities, not just leading schools, but community leaders in their own right. Since school closed in March 2020, Dignitas has been working to equip, empower and support our School Leaders as new Leaders of Learning for this current global crisis.

Dignitas piloted this program in Kawangware and Dandora, both urban informal settlements in Nairobi in which Dignitas has well established cohorts of school partners.  The Dignitas team recruited a group of 61 Leaders of Learning, including both school leaders and teacher leaders.  The selected Leaders of Learning went through some initial orientation, including familiarization with the digital training and coaching tools.

The Dignitas team also worked extremely hard and fast to design the training and coaching curriculum for the Leaders of Learning.  The curriculum was designed in response to the question, “What mindsets, skills and resources does a school leader/teacher leader need to support children during school closures?”  Content was created that would equip and empower these leaders to protect the learning and well-being of children at home.

With content and delivery tools in the final stages of design, the Leaders of Learning program design began to take shape. It represented a pivot from in-person training and coaching to remote, largely digital, training and coaching. This has called on the team to curate new methods of engagement, community building, trust building, training facilitation and coaching support. Session evaluations show that leaders report a 48% knowledge gain, and most competencies related to dealing with trauma, parental engagement and leveraging distance learning resources are rated at an average of 70% across leaders.

The Dignitas team recognized that in this season of crisis, there would be some additional interventions needed to keep children safe and learning.  In partnership with our school leaders, 262 of the most vulnerable households were selected to benefit from a feeding program – we focused on single parent and grandparent led homes, where the main breadwinner had lost their source of income.  Our baseline household mapping survey actually indicated that 79% of families had lost all pre-covid sources of income, so the need was huge.

Each of the 262 households identified for support has received monthly distribution of food and sanitary products, accompanied by a small cash transfer to help them meet additional health or well-being needs.

More than 500 children were also gifted notebooks, pencils and other stationery items to aid learning at home.

Finally, each of the mapped learners benefiting from the Leader of Learning household support has received to date, five volumes of Dignitas Learning Packets.  These packets are curriculum aligned literacy and numeracy workbooks, designed to keep learning on track. Dignitas Leadership Coaches, all trained and registered TSC teachers have been working tirelessly with a group of volunteers to develop this resource.

To date, Leaders of Learning have mapped and regularly supported 3,089 learners from 1,456 households in Kawangware and Dandora.

Thank you for your support and generosity which have made this work possible!