Getting in touch with parents, kids, or teachers around you to assess their needs, contacting tech companies to provide digital material for underprivileged families, registering for tutoring... Those are the kinds of actions that the Laidlaw scholars will encourage the participants of the Reaction for Education program to do. The Reaction for Education program is a one-week program where participants join a group of 15 people who, just like them, want to get to action to support education all over the world. They are guided by two "mobilisers", who are two Laidlaw scholars: their role is to guide the participants to action, to encourage them all along the way, and to help solve challenges they are facing. Every day, the participants are receiving an email with suggestion of actions, and kits and guide to achieve their action, and everyday, they are speaking through an online session together to share successes and challenges. 

Creating content for the program

Since two weeks, the scholars have been preparing the content of the program so that it adapts to the actual needs of parents, teachers, and kids all over the world.

They first experimented the program as participants, to spot the potential improvements and challenges faced by future participants. Then they designed content that could be provided to parents, kids, or teachers, to help them during those unusual times. Those include:

• websites to gather ressources such as this one created by Brandon in the US, or this one created by Lena, Moyin and Farida in the UK in record time for have all the ressources in one place. 
• Rose creating a resource pack for parents to use to help keep their kids active and fit in lockdown if they have limited space and access to outdoor areas
• Kahra creating a video that provide a fun way to learn for children.

Find here the full list of contents created. 

Communicating to recruit volunteers

To be sure we had enough participants to launch the program, scholars started posting all over social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin...) to recruit participants. They created graphic content to attract participants into this adventure, and even created an Instagram account and twitter one. Good job everyone!

Getting trained to become mobilisers

Last week, all the scholars followed a live training and watched modules (videos) to go deep into how to support their participants during the week. Those include learning about community building (how to create a feeling of belonging within a group), online facilitation (how to facilitate online calls, how to facilitate a whatsapp group?), and much more. 

Zulekha, a scholar from UK, has been coordinating the whole team to be sure the program is ready to launch and to support the mobilisers during this week. Good job Zulekha!

So what's happening since Monday?

Since Monday, the scholars are almost all mobilizing their batch with participants from 9 different countries (including Rwanda, Mexico, Malaysia, UK, US, Ireland...). They are answering everyday on their whatsapp group, having daily calls to debrief of the actions of the day. They are doing a great job of mobilising their batch, and we can't wait to hear about the results of their actions Friday during a celebration call that will take place at 5pm (London time) on this link. Join us if you can! 

Congrats to all the scholars for your energy, contribution, and will to make an impact!