COVID-19 Rapid Response: Children in Crossfire, Tanzania

Watch this video:

We asked organisations who had received a COVID-19 Rapid Response grant from UK Aid Direct to create a short video covering their activities and what they achieved with their extra funding.

Here is the second in our series of videos: from Children in Crossfire, Tanzania (opens in a new tab). Subtitles are available on this video.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in Tanzania led to the closure of all schools. Parents had very limited means and experience to support children learning at home, especially in rural settings including Children in Crossfire’s impact districts of Kongwa and Chamwino in Dodoma region of Tanzania.

The government and stakeholders came up with the digitalized learning alternatives for television and radio, but as these were digital-based resources, it left out the majority of rural-based children due to limited access to digital devices and electricity.

“We developed an activity workbook for young children to guide playful learning at home, which benefitted 18,150 children.”

Children in Crossfire engaged a PPE technical team across government (Ministry of Education and President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Government), Tanzania Institute of Education, Local government, Pre-primary teachers, and CiC implementing partners to discuss an alternative resource to complement digital learning resources for rural context/schools.

A print-based PPE Activity Workbook was developed to reach children with limited access to radio and television, encouraging the use of locally available, no-cost recyclable materials for playful learning.

The workbook was printed in bulk and disseminated across rural communities, reaching 21,000 children enrolled across all the 232 government primary schools of Kongwa and Chamwino, and the workbook was adapted into accessible formats for children with visual impairments.

Watch the full impact video on YouTube (opens in a new tab).