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**Deadline expired** Consultancy: Transition from early childhood intervention to inclusive early education, OSF, Ukraine

Download full details (PDF)

 Application deadline: 21 May 2018

This consultancy is with Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Program. The international consultant will provide technical support to OSF’s Ukrainian partners and work closely with all project partners in Kharkiv and Lviv, including Inclusive Resource Centres (IRCs) and local education authorities.

The consultancy primarily focuses on the provision of capacity building support to enable the three national partners in Ukraine and their counterparts to pilot and establish a transition model(s) in two regions in Ukraine with a potential replication nationwide.

The consultant will provide support to the three national partners through online consultations, sharing resources and co-facilitation of a training for building capacity of Ukrainian partners in the area of transition from early intervention to IEE.

The consultant is expected to visit Ukraine twice, for the introductory workshop and the basic training.

 Read the full terms of reference for more details and how to apply.

#MakeItPublic Campaign

The Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) has launched a campaign calling for all countries to report back to their citizens on their progress in education. The campaign is called #MakeItPublic.

The campaign highlights that: “Governments are the primary duty bearers for the right to education. Governments should be transparent about their progress towards their education commitments so that we can hold them to account. However, only one in every two countries have published a national education monitoring report since 2010, and most do not produce them very regularly.”

The campaign calls on

“All governments to:

  •  take steps towards producing a regular national education monitoring report, capturing progress on education commitments across all education levels, and government education expenditure;
  •  make reports publicly available to their citizens, including on the internet;
  •  use their national education monitoring reports as key sources for the education section of their SDG national voluntary reviews;

 All regional organizations with an education agenda to:

  •  produce regional education monitoring reports, based on their regional education strategies and monitoring frameworks, thereby influencing national approaches to monitoring education.”

Find out more about the campaign and what you can do to contribute.

**Deadline expired** Program Administrative Assistant, Early Childhood Program, OSF, London, UK

Full details available from OSF website.

 Application deadline: 20 April 2018

 Essential duties and responsibilities:

  •  Helps to manage individual and team calendars, arranges staff travel, submits travel authorizations, administers/processes expense reports and invoices, handles intake and appropriate routing of calls/emails, and deals with public inquiries.
  • Handles logistics for events and meetings, develops related budgets and manages costs. Liaises with vendors and consultants and assists with contracts, compliance and procurement processes.
  • Provides support for both internal and external meetings, including Board meetings, as requested; takes minutes, photocopies, collates and distributes documents, and arranges catering.
  • Provides administrative support for financial activities, responds to requests for cash and money transfer payments, processes invoices and grant letters/contracts, processes payments to vendors and consultants, assists with updating and tracking budgets, prepares expense reports, and monitors and maintains budget filings.
  • Maintains an inventory of all publications and ensures stocks are on display, as required, and available to staff.  Assists with production and launch of publications and keeps track/creates publication mailing lists.
  • Updates the Open Society website and KARL (internal site) as required, highlights appropriate material to be posted on the website and uploads new material. Explores use of social media to promote the work of the team. May oversee day to day operations of the central contact database, including organizing information, creates mailing lists, and works with programs to keep contacts current.
  • Provides administrative support for grant making activities and/or programs by performing operational work, as directed, that helps achieve the Early Childhood Program’s goals/plans. May identify new administrative/operational needs and develop/implement solutions.
  • Enters and uploads information and runs reports in management information systems and platforms. Liaises with grantees, staff, external reviewers, etc. Compiles and maintains grants-related data and records and timelines.
  • Supports the implementation of the Early Childhood Program team’s communications strategy through tracking of ongoing projects, liaising with OSF’s communications team and assisting ECP team members in the development of web and social media content.
  • Ad-hoc responsibilities: May be asked to take on substantive responsibilities or projects, such as overseeing translation and  communications-related projects; conducting basic research/scanning of political landscape, grantee updates, policy, and research developments; collecting, compiling and analyzing data in support of eligibility assessments, docket write-ups, peer and portfolio reviews; and reviewing grantees’ financial reports.

NOTE: This is not an EENET vacancy. Please communicate all queries directly to OSF.

**PAST** “Keep Your Promises” – GCE Global Action Week for Education, 22-28 April 2018

Just one week to go…… Each year the Global Campaign for Education leads a Global Action Week,  with a specific theme. This year’s theme is “Accountability for SDG4 through Citizen Participation”. The campaign focuses on holding governments and the international community to account for implementing the full SDG4 agenda – asking governments to “Keep Your Promises”. Governments will be asked to honour the pledges they have made to education funding, for instance, those pledges made during the recent Global Partnership for Education funding replenishment conference.

GCE Global Action Week logo

The Global Campaign for Education is calling on governments to:

  • develop credible roadmaps for implementation of the full SDG4 agenda, with clear mechanisms for transparency, allowing for active meaningful participation of civil society;
  • halt the criminalisation and shrinking of civil society spaces, both nationally and internationally;
  • strengthen public systems and state capacities to ensure that education is free, quality, and equitable and reject turning towards low fee/”affordable” private schooling as an answer to the education crisis.

 There are lots of things you can do to help support the Global Action Week. Look at the ‘Take action’ page on the GAW website for more information.

Global Action Week posyet showing 6 children (2 girls). One girl is signing. Poster message reads"we call on governments to #keepyourpromises for inclusive education"

 

NOTE: This event is not organised by EENET. Please contact the organisers directly any queries.

New blog and report: Learning from colleagues to improve inclusive education

In the latest EENET blog, Peter Grimes and Els Heijnen-Maathuis tell us about an innovative monitoring and evaluation approach for Save the Children’s inclusive education programmes, using peer review rather than external evaluation consultants.

The full report of the peer review process and findings is also available on our website: Developing Inclusive Practices through Action Learning: Inclusive education cross-country peer review Bangladesh and Indonesia (PDF 1.7mb).

 

Learning from colleagues to improve inclusive education

In this blog, Peter Grimes and Els Heijnen-Maathuis tell us about an innovative monitoring and evaluation approach for Save the Children’s inclusive education programmes, using peer review rather than external evaluation consultants.

You can find out more in the full report (PDF 1.7mb): Developing Inclusive Practices through Action Learning: Inclusive education cross-country peer review Bangladesh and Indonesia

 

Front cover of peer review report

The cross-country peer review established a strong link between the two projects. The project teams identified areas for continued collaborative sharing and learning such as for inclusive education documentation, improving their project exit strategies, and examining a CBR approach that moves towards Community-Based Inclusive Development.

Peer review rather than evaluation

To understand and describe what is changing in ‘our’ inclusive education projects in different countries, Save the Children carried out a cross-country peer review in Bangladesh and Indonesia. The documented peer review actively engaged professional colleagues or peers from another country in a critical review of project activities, ‘assessing’ what has worked well (or not) and why. The aim was not to judge but to improve and help each other enhance the quality of the collective contribution to inclusive education. This process of collaboratively sharing and reflecting as part of everyday practice led to improved problem solving, capacity building and professional learning opportunities based on similar experiences in a different context.

Facilitators or ‘critical friends’ instead of unknown consultants

Two facilitators or ‘critical friends’ were involved as a reflective sounding board for the two country teams. Both facilitators were considered trusted persons who could provide technical support during the peer review process but also ask challenging questions, suggest reframing of approaches, provide information to be examined through another lens and offer critiques or commentaries as friends.

“The peer review has helped us to ask more and better questions and not be satisfied with just knowing that we are reaching more children with disabilities in the communities.”

The two country-teams identified strengths and challenges in each other’s projects; collected information about the situation prior to the project and the current situation; highlighted good practices for replication and suggested ideas for improvement to each other. Some of the issues both country teams reflected on, discussed and tried to find better solutions for were:

  • how to address the lack of accurate data on children with disabilities;
  • how to support teachers to provide quality education for all children;
  • how to influence a highly centralised education system more effectively.

Empowered national staff

The cross-country peer review was experienced by both country teams as a very useful, enriching and empowering experience. They realised they were not alone with their challenges and together generated new knowledge and ideas. It has worked out as a dialogue between the two countries to better understand conceptual and operational aspects of the projects and thus learn from both successes and failures.

Future peer reviews

Learning from this experience, future peer reviews may need more in-country time for each review visit. Instead of mostly distance support from facilitators or ‘critical friends’, it would be better for these supporting experts to be with the teams during the in-country peer reviews, to improved understanding of the review process, especially when developing the tools and for post-review evaluation.

 

Read the full report of the peer review process and findings: Developing Inclusive Practices through Action Learning: Inclusive education cross-country peer review Bangladesh and Indonesia (PDF 1.7mb)

International Day for Street Children – 12 April

To mark this day, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, held a seminar showcasing the projects some of their academics are working on around the world that contribute to the growing body of knowledge concerning street-connected young people. This short article introduces some of that work and provides links to the projects/organisations.

Remember, EENET’s own Enabling Education Review no.6 focuses on street-connected children. It’s packed with articles showcasing innovative projects from various countries.  

Cover page of Enabling Education Review 6

**PAST** Webinar: SDGs and their references to the inclusion of persons with disabilities

Visit the Bridging the Gap website for more details.

Bridging the Gap II (BtG-II) organises a webinar-based training cycle to explore different aspects of the inclusion of persons with disability in development cooperation. 

Dates:

25 April 2018, 4:30pm CET: Spanish

26 April 2018, 2:30pm CET: English

27 April 2018, 2:30pm CET: French

Format: GoToWebinar training platform

BtG-II aims to contribute to the socio-economic inclusion, equality and non-discrimination of persons with disabilities through more inclusive and accountable institutions and policies. BtG-II supports the mainstreaming of disability in international cooperation and the efforts of five partner countries (Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Sudan) in planning and implementing inclusive public policies and services.

The second BtG training session will focus on the topic: “The Sustainable Development Goals and their references to the inclusion of persons with disabilities”.

Register online:

Spanish webinar registration

English webinar registration

French webinar registration

NOTE: This event is not organised by EENET. Please contact the organisers directly with any queries.

 

Gaza Children’s Cinema – film-inspired learning

This month’s featured project is Gaza Children’s Cinema. If you have a project you would like us to feature in a news update, please contact us.

Experience around the world shows that education happens in lots of different settings, not just in a formal school. Children learn valuable lessons in the community, in the family and through doing practical activities outside school. They learn through observing and discussing. In many communities around the world, television and film are also important parts of education. Children watch educational and entertaining programmes and films, and often without even realising it, they analyse and debate what they have seen, ask questions, and make connections between what they have seen on the screen and what they have learned in school.

This learning and fun opportunity is denied to the vast majority of children in Gaza, many of whom live as refugees. As a result of a decade of blockades, freedom of movement, commerce and cultural exchange is restricted. Children in Gaza also face unacceptable levels of violence, conflict, fear and abuses of their basic rights.

Gaza Children’s Cinema is a small organisation that brings cinema viewing and film-inspired learning opportunities to Gaza’s children. During 2017 it facilitated about 160 film screenings and workshops for children across Gaza, helping to break their imposed isolation from the rest of the world. The children get involved in ‘buying and selling’ tickets and popcorn, writing and designing film posters, and discussing the films after they have watched them. It’s a safe and fun environment, as well as providing valuable learning and socialisation opportunities.

3 children work together at a table to design a poster

You can watch a short introductory film about the project and read their latest project update. You can also contact EENET’s Arabic Language Community Facilitator, Ayman Qwaider, for more information about the project: arabic@eenet.org.uk.

* New website feature * World of resources – world map

We’re very excited about the latest addition to our new website. It’s an interactive world map to help you find documents and videos about inclusive education in specific countries. This is a visual alternative to scrolling through the country list in the database search.

Each country for which we have documents has a red flag on the map. Click on the flag and you’ll see a list of all the documents about that country. Remember to check out the other countries near your country too, as there may be some really useful and relevant experiences happening just next door!

If your chosen country does not have a red flag, it means we have no documents about inclusive education in that country yet. But you could send us something – an article, a report, a poster. Help us fill the gaps in our map!

screenshot of interactive world map showing countries marked with red flags