Norwegian Refugee Council: Protection, social connectedness, and learning in First Line Education Response

• In Event: Adapting Learning through Play in Acute Emergencies: Resources, Strategies, and Evidence for Rapid Implementation

Proposal

NRC has more than 75 years’ experience working in conflict and emergency settings across 40 countries. The organisation has mechanisms to 1) rapidly implement interventions during acute crises responding to the needs of the hardest to reach communities and to 2) set up responses in new countries when new emergencies arise.

NRC’s “first-line response” during a crisis focuses on the provision of and access to a response package of goods and services to provide safety, fulfil basic needs related to NRC’s competency areas and start building resilience amongst displaced populations. NRC’s first line response activities start within 6 weeks after a crisis and have a maximum duration of 6 months.

NRC is committed to include education services as soon as possible in emergency response, providing children and youth with access to protective education that prepares them for transition into longer-term learning pathways. The scope of NRC’s education response is based on a standard package focusing on three interconnected pillars of safety, connectedness and learning. We provide children with physical and emotional safety to recover from stressful experiences, through establishing safe and inclusive learning environments and through the provision of classroom based psychosocial support. We provide children with the opportunity to interact with peers, teachers and the community, thus re-establishing routines and a sense of belonging. We support them to recover and build a bridge to longer-term learning pathways by offering access to a range of critical (life-) skills, including basic language skills, through relevant, age-appropriate and flexible education, recreation and play based activities.

NRC has developed and piloted several resources integrating learning, recreation/ play and psychosocial support to ensure continuity of education and respond to most urgent needs during the first phase of an emergency. NRC’s basic response package includes teaching and learning materials such as:

· Child Education Pathways (CEP) and Youth Education Pathways (YEP) in Emergency - designed for children and youth who are not attending education to ensure they remain connected to learning

· Better Learning Programme (BLP) - NRC’s flagship classroom based psychosocial support programme

· Miskit toolkit – a storybook with complementary exercises, designed to encourage active participation and engagement in programme activities

· Learning through Play materials developed in partnerships with Sesame Workshop in Colombia to support school-readiness

· Contextualized and condensed versions of the Teachers in Crisis Contexts (TiCC) training package to rapidly support teacher professional development

With support from LEGO, an acute humanitarian response fund has been established in 2024 enabling NRC to mobilize and respond rapidly in the event of an acute humanitarian crisis to ensure children’s safety, wellbeing, and resilience, via holistic education interventions that include learning through play.

This panel will present findings and incorporate learning from several examples of NRC’s Education First Line Responses including the most recent ones such as Somalia, DRC, Lebanon but also South Sudan, Chad, Sudan, Colombia and Myanmar.

The presentation will explain approaches, mechanism, resources used as well as challenges, lessons learnt and ongoing efforts to strengthen and further consolidate NRC’s LtP approach in First Line Response.

Authors

• Marta Schena, Norwegian Refugee Council

• Constantijn Wouters, Norwegian Refugee Council