Education Cannot Wait is the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies. Since 2017, ECW has reached 7 million children and adolescents averaging 48.4% being girls. Because of Covid-19, ECW has funded $388.6 million to expand and support these programs and has reached 3.7 million adolescents across 32 crisis- impacted countries in 2021 alone. Reports are showing that there is still lot of work to be done, as of June 2022 numbers estimate 222 million school aged children and adolescents are still in urgent need for educational support. The countries of focus are Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Sahel and Venezuela regions.

There are some major highlights to report that have come from this Covid-19 crisis. In 2021, an estimate of 27,000 teachers have been trained to support the growing number of students that have been reached. There has also been a rise in education completion reaching 79% and a grade transition rate increase to 63%.

By: Alex Sellitsch