How We're Responding To COVID-19

The COVID-19 virus is having a significant impact on communities around the world, including those that Right To Play serves. The children we work with are some of the most vulnerable and are particularly susceptible to the effects of a crisis like this one.

The COVID-19 pandemic will devastate places where health systems are already fragile, physical distancing is impossible, and economies and social safety nets are weak. Children are particularly vulnerable in a crisis like this one. School shut-downs and economic hardship puts kids at risk of sickness, child labour, and early marriage.

Right To Play is applying our expertise from the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia to today’s crisis. Before physical distancing was put in place, we were able to teach 33,000 kids proper handwashing techniques that will help keep them and their families safe through the crisis. As stay-at-home orders rolled out, we’ve shifted to remote programming, and are now reaching children in all 15 countries where we operate.

Your support can help us to:

Keep children safe and healthy: We’re reaching children at home through online methods, radio, TV, and direct outreach to teach them essential handwashing, social distancing, and hygiene practices that can prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Keep children learning: We're delivering life skills and educational games directly to kids in the home. We’re also training teachers and coaches in how to support children through and after the crisis, and collaborating with ministries of education on the development of distance learning curriculum.

Keep children mentally strong: Supporting children’s mental health throughout this crisis is crucial for their recovery. We must ensure that the children we work with can return to their education and their lives in a meaningful and productive way after the crisis is over, and help their communities rebuild. We’re using our experience working with children in conflict-affected areas to develop and deliver health and psychosocial support activities aimed at children and their parents.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a gendered face.

More than 745 million girls are out of school in 191 countries, and many may never be able to return.

Being out of school puts girls at greater risk of early marriage and pregnancy, abuse, female genital mutilation, and forced labour.

More than 75% of caregivers in an emergency are women and girls. This means girls are at greater risk of having their educations ended permanently, even once schools reopen. In fact, studies show that girls are 50% less likely than boys to come back to secondary school after an emergency. We're working with families, communities, and governments to protect girls from these outcomes and ensure they can go back to school when the crisis is over.

Our Gender Equality Specialist, Aamina Adham, explains more.

COVID-19 is having an unprecedented impact on education systems across the globe. Nationwide school closures have affected more than 91% of the world’s student population. UNESCO estimates that 1.5 billion learners have had their education disrupted by school closures. This is in addition to the more than 75 million children and youth who were already in urgent need of educational support due to crisis and conflict.

The pandemic has exposed critical gaps in education systems within and between countries. And school closures threaten to roll back gains made in recent years to improve access and to advance gender equality in and through education. While the COVID-19 pandemic poses huge challenges, it also presents an opportunity to build education systems back in a way that are more inclusive, more equal and more resilient over the long term.

Right To Play is committed to working with partners to strengthen opportunities for education for children and youth after the crisis

Our Education Specialist, Andrea Diaz-Varela, explains more.

We need to keep children safe, healthy, and learning now so that they’re able to back to school when the crisis is over, and help their communities recover and rebuild stronger than ever. In 15 countries, we have the expertise, the partnerships, and the teams to make that happen.