Challenges and lessons in scaling an ICT based language program for conflict affected individuals

• In Event: Tech tools for tough terrain: best practices, lessons learned, and new tools for education in crisis and conflict

Proposal

Background
Paper Airplanes uses volunteer tutors and video conferencing technology to provide free, one-on-one language and skills education for teens and adults affected by conflict in the MENA region. Our students are primarily Syrians who have been affected by the conflict in Syria and they are typically looking to re-enroll in school or find employment.

Our largest program is English, which started in fall 2014 with 13 tutor/student pairs. It has grown to have about 250+ pairs per term/500+ per year, with the goal of reaching 1000 pairs per year. Scaling our model to reach more students has presented several challenges including: Developing curriculum materials that work on low bandwidths, students having limited hours of internet connectivity, and finding ways to recruit more tutors online and training them to work with students dealing with the trauma of conflict.

Student Challenges
ICT presents many opportunities to reach students in conflict settings, however students often have limited access to wifi or cellular data. To address this, we have modified our curriculum, cutting back on HD video and large images. Because more than half of our students use their phones to meet with their tutors, it is also important to make sure that our materials are mobile friendly. Any ICT aimed at reaching students in conflict settings must take these two factors into account.

Tutor Challenges
The increasing demand on the student side and the fact that we operate remotely means we have had to find ways to recruit a growing number of volunteer tutors online. Expanding our tutor pool globally is one way we have been able to increase tutor numbers. Initially, the tutors in the English program were US university students, but as our social media presence has grown, we have begun to attract English speakers from around the world. As the number of tutors in our program has grown we have also developed a formal training program hosted on Google Classroom to make sure that all tutors, regardless of their background or prior teaching experience, are equipped with knowledge about the conflict in Syria and skills to help their trauma-affected students. In order to expand our tutor-base we have also considered recruiting tutors from within conflict zones because they have a desire to help others in a similar situation the same conflict, but this has forced us to analyze how pairing individuals affected by. ICT provides novel ways to provide educational opportunities to those affected by conflict, but we must also foresee how these same tools could lead to security and privacy concerns within this vulnerable population.

Implications
We believe that the lessons we have learned in addressing these challenges are relevant to others deploying ICT in settings of crisis, conflict, and violence. In order to increase educational access for conflict affected individuals we must use low-bandwidth, mobile friendly, and secure technologies. We must also train our tutors to use our trauma-informed curriculum and how to support students as they recover from trauma.

Author

• Anna M Farrell, Paper Airplanes