Continuing Early Childhood Education in Contexts of Crisis: A three-year retrospective.

• In Event: Building Resilience and Fostering Hope: Early Childhood Education in Ethiopia's Polycrisis

Proposal

Background
Following prolonged crisis including climate change-induced floods and conflicts, Ethiopia continues to grapple with persistent humanitarian crisis whereby young children are among the most affected. According to the 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan, the cumulative effects of conflict, violence, and climate shocks have left 21.4 million people — 4.1 million women and 12 million children — in need of humanitarian assistance . The impact of this polycrisis on the education of Ethiopia's youngest children is severe.
Delivering high-quality ECDE services while ensuring reach to all children in emergency-affected contexts can be challenging due to operational constraints, limited resources and capacities, and lack of political will. Furthermore, in such contexts, capacity for efficient monitoring and evaluation is often restricted which further limits data-driven program adaptation and improvement.

This paper will showcase how it can be done, and lessons learned along the way. The paper reviews three years of learnings through LEGO Foundation Childhood Development Activity’s quality early childhood education in contexts of crisis, such as drought, flood and conflict. The paper will articulate three sets of learnings regarding how to sustain with quality early learning in spite of very disruptive manmade and natural disasters. Specifically, the paper will articulate how the team has established systems of continuous adaptation and relationship maintenance to ensure continued early learning service support in the conflict-affected Amhara, Afar and Tigray region. Second, the paper will articulate the importance of local partnership and school-community engagement to sustain critical elements of early learning such as school feeding in the drought affected region of Somali and Oromia. Finally, the paper will share what has been learned about how to meet the needs of children with disabilities, despite dramatic funding reductions, and the encouraging role of local actors.
Methodology
To document lessons learned the Childhood Development Activity hosted multi-stakeholder annual review meetings. These events included government from three ministries, local government, seven implementing partners, three special service partners, and staff of the Childhood Development Activity. The format of the meeting included reviewing Activity objectives for children, and progress made towards those objectives, as well as gathering input on the future of the program, what should be strengthened, stopped, and started. These and other meetings collected and verified the lessons learned while continuing to deliver early learning to some of the country’s most vulnerable, the youngest children living in crisis-affected contexts.
Conclusion
Despite significant challenges from conflict and climate change, this paper demonstrates that it is possible to deliver and sustain high-quality early childhood education in crisis-affected regions of Ethiopia. Our findings, derived from multi-stakeholder annual review meetings, highlight that key lessons in continuous adaptation and fostering relationships were crucial for delivering services in conflict zones. Strong local partnerships and community engagement were essential for sustaining critical services, such as school feeding, in drought-affected areas. Also, the pivotal role of local actors proved vital in meeting the needs of children with disabilities, even in the face of dramatic funding reductions, by overcoming operational hurdles and limited resources to deliver ECDE services.

Author

• Meheret Tena Getachew, Save the Children