\n<\/p>\n
NEW YORK — <\/span>Global conflicts from South Sudan’s political crisis<\/a> to the United States’ recent war with Iran<\/a> are putting more children at risk of suffering<\/a>.<\/p>\n One humanitarian duo wants to ensure conflict-stricken children get funding for an often-overlooked need: education. Under an agreement announced Wednesday, the LEGO Foundation committed $97 million to expand International Rescue Committee programs that use play to help millions of children learn and recover. <\/p>\n \u201cChildren who are born in conflict have their childhood stolen from them,” IRC President David Miliband told The Associated Press. \u201cBut what\u2019s remarkable about children is that if you give them a bit of their childhood back, they make the most of it. And this is about giving the best of childhood back.\u201d<\/p>\n The five-year partnership aims to reach 5 million children across East Africa and the Middle East. Who, exactly, they serve will change as conflicts evolve. LEGO Foundation CEO Sidsel Marie Kristensen pledged to focus on those \u201cin the most dire contexts.” Currently under consideration are Ethiopia, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Uganda.<\/p>\n Kristensen said the \u201ctruly agile\u201d framework is designed to bring play-based learning wherever it\u2019s needed most, rather than funding individual place-based grants that might become outdated as conflicts evolve in real time.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the world we are living in right now, nobody knows honestly what is happening tomorrow or in two months,\u201d Kristensen said. \u201cThat (flexibility) is what we need right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The investment will introduce more classrooms to an IRC-led program called PlayMatters that offers training for teachers of 3-to 12-year-olds to integrate what they call \u201cplayful learning” into lessons. The goal is not to tell educators what they should teach but help tailor their instruction to the needs that arise in schools serving children traumatized by crises. Program leaders also act as a policy advocates for education funding at the national level, working with government officials to embed their materials into their curriculum.<\/p>\n At a primary school serving refugees in western Uganda\u2019s Nakivale settlement, one teacher credits PlayMatters with reducing absenteeism. Sister Kasingye Secunda said attendance used to be an issue. Teachers try their best to make students “feel at home,\u201d she said. But many students don\u2019t understand both the local language and English, the language of instruction.<\/p>\n Children learn colors through one game where they select mangoes, bananas and other fruits to share with their classmates. They build confidence through class presentations, she said, and develop leadership as they take turns guiding small groups through activities.<\/p>\n \u201cLearners enjoy the lessons,\u201d Secunda said. \u201cThey are eager to come to school.\u201d<\/p>\n From Ethiopia to Tanzania, a radio show helps children name their emotions through episodes offered in multiple languages featuring culturally familiar characters. PlayMatters Project Director Martin Omukuba said they are expanding such digitally delivered multimedia lessons. The radio show, for example, helps them remotely reach schools in South Sudan that are made inaccessible by flooding for half the year.<\/p>\n The LEGO Foundation provides flexible funding so that IRC can respond to the fluid nature of conflicts. A refugee class size can quickly jump from 25 to 150 students, Omukuba noted, creating new demands for sanitation, nutrition or other classroom needs not traditionally classified under education. Omukuba credited the LEGO Foundation for trusting them to move grant money around in emergencies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need first to make sure that children are alive,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can introduce the education when they are stabilized.\u201d<\/p>\n The partners first collaborated in 2019 when the LEGO Foundation committed $100 million to \u201cAhlan Simsim,\u201d the show by IRC and the nonprofit Sesame Workshop that helps kids affected by the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises.<\/a><\/p>\n Kristensen, who leads the Denmark-based corporate foundation that funds early childhood development, said they’ve been scaling up their donations in these settings. The LEGO Foundation recently announced a separate $30 million partnership with global funding collaborative Co-Impact to support locally led solutions to issues of learning and wellbeing among children impacted by conflict and crisis.<\/p>\n She wants Wednesday’s announcement to inspire greater collaboration among governments, civil society and the private sector. \u201cThat is so needed in a world right now where the development aid is decreasing,\u201d she said, referring to international assistance cuts by the United States and many European nations.<\/p>\n Those cuts have stretched the humanitarian system’s capacity over the past year. Already, Miliband said, the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo<\/a> provides \u201ca graphic demonstration of the short-sightedness of aid cuts for activities that are considered marginal.” He pointed to sanitation and handwashing programs in the Congo’s Ituri province, where the global health emergency is centered, that lost U.S. funding last year as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of international development.<\/p>\n \u201cWe warned at the time what the risk was,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd sure as night follows day, we end up with an under-detected Ebola outbreak.\u201d<\/p>\n International Rescue Committee officials similarly see early childhood development not as a luxury, but a necessary intervention to toxic stress that alters brain development and delays learning.<\/p>\n Education was an underfunded part of humanitarian responses even before wealthy countries slashed their aid budgets, according to Patty McIlreavy, the president and CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. \u201cLife saving\u201d assistance was too narrowly limited to \u201cwhat do you actually need to keep the body alive,\u201d she said,” a definition that excluded \u201clife sustaining\u201d efforts such as children’s education.<\/p>\n She pointed to Wednesday’s announcement as an example for donors, who often ask her how they can actually help in complex conflicts without clear ends in sight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not our role as philanthropy to fix what’s broken in a country,” she said. “That’s politics. That’s bigger than us. But there’s so much we can do \u2014 even by offering six months or a year of education.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP\u2019s philanthropy coverage, visit https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/philanthropy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n