Around the world, COVID-19 has affected all areas of our lives, delaying production, decreasing travel across all industries and restricting in person interactions. The education sector has taken one of the biggest hits throughout this pandemic as ministries of education have not been able to provide remote learning opportunities for students due to lack of internet access and adequate infrastructure. Even before COVID-19, it was common for students to drop out of school to support the livelihoods of their families. Now that schools have been closed for months, there is an even greater concern that dropout rates could be higher as schools reopen.

Pencils of Promise (PoP) remained focused throughout this past year on ensuring students are set up for success to continue their learning journey and, thus, reach their full potential. At a time in which the global community has been turned upside down due a pandemic, it is important to reflect on the opportunity that education elicits and the freedoms that are compounded as a product of its pursuit. This focus helps to create learning environments that continually welcome students back through supportive and engaging classrooms.

2021 Overview

Successes

Throughout the pandemic, PoP teams have been resilient and creative as they’ve thought of new ways to continue supporting partner schools, teachers and students.  Their commitment continued through 2021 as teams became even more familiar with a new normal and how their work could continue through this time.

• In Ghana, PoP completed 10 school builds, launched programming in 30 new Teacher Support schools, and started WASH programs in 20 new schools. They started conversations to formalize a partnership between two new Teacher Training Colleges and completed PoP’s first digital reading application, to be piloted in early 2022.
• In Guatemala, PoP continued to provide teachers with workshops and coaching sessions online and continued to support students, teachers and parents by delivering materials directly to community leaders who then distributed them to parents and teachers. The team completed 9 schools builds and at the end of the year was able to graduate 19 schools out of the Teacher Support and WASH programs.
• In Laos, despite schools being closed for the majority of late 2021, the team built 15 schools and held meetings remotely to continue planning for the new Memorandum of Understanding. Part of this planning process included the development of two new program pilots, Lao Teacher Support and SEL. The team also completed their first longitudinal study after three years of conducting evaluations.   

Challenges

The overarching challenge of the past year was the ability to connect with communities and staff on the level in which we are used to.  This showed up in various forms, from not being able to collect all of our data points to slowing down the process for developing new programs.

• Evaluations: 
  • Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Learning & Evaluation teams in Ghana, Guatemala and Laos were unable to conduct certain data collection, especially student tests
    • Guatemala missed three data collection points for their literacy assessment (i.e., Modified Early Grade Reading Assessment) and it disrupted our longitudinal design
    • Ghana missed o data collection point for Early Grade Reading Assessment
    • Delayed and inconsistent data collection periods in Laos may have affected student performance on the test
• Program development:
  • In Laos, new program pilots were pushed back due to COVID, which may delay inclusion of these programs in the full implementation model.
  • Due to the staff’s limited ability to travel both within each country and internationally, it has taken longer to plan for programming.  Many meetings are conducted over multiple 1-2 hour zoom calls rather than one day in person.

Year Over Year Comparison

Looking Forward to 2022

PoP has set ambitious goals for the next year to expand our impact with new programming while continuing to grow our current school build, Teacher Support and WASH programs.  Across Ghana, Guatemala and Laos we will be expanding to almost 70 new Teacher Support schools and over 50 new WASH schools over the course of the next year.

New programming will be piloted in Ghana with the start of PoP’s own digital reading app in two schools, and we will expand our programs by working with two new Colleges of Education to train teachers before they even enter a classroom.  In Guatemala, the team will be taking teacher support to a new area of the country by growing the program to schools in the Zona Reina region.  In Laos, we will be preparing for two new program pilots, a Lao Teacher Support pilot set to take place in September of 2022 and a Social and Emotional Learning pilot in January of 2023.