ExSEL: Supporting inclusive, quality education for displaced and host community learners
Porticus strives for a world where whole child development (WCD) is a force for inclusion for children in extreme adversity. That is why we have chosen to focus on building inclusive education systems where social-emotional skills are a key enabler for children who have been displaced and children on the margin of school systems to develop to their full potential.
Within our new Building Future Generations strategy, approved in 2023, Porticus re-commits its support to education systems - both formal and non-formal - and systemic actors within national, international and humanitarian responses, to embed socio-emotional learning (SEL) and mental health and psycho-social support (MHPSS) in the service of displaced and host community learners, and the education workforce that serves them.
Between 2023 and 2027, we will offer our financial and other resources for technical assistance, convening, coordination, collaboration and partnership brokering, with a focus on contributing to addressing the educational needs of displaced and host community learners in Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya and the Rohingya response in Bangladesh. We will also support relevant global and international organizations, initiatives, mechanisms and networks aimed at change on the ground.
Broadly speaking, we pledge to:
- Support the inclusion of displaced learners into national education systems, where possible, with a view towards positively influencing power dynamics and mindsets in support of equity. This includes strengthening their capacity to deliver SEL + MHPSS;
- Encourage the centering of children and young people within responses that we support;
- Aid the development and use of contextually relevant tools and approaches that build resilience of displaced and host community learners recognizing that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to their education;
- Collaborate with others on the generation, curation, sharing and use of learning, data and evidence on what works for holistic learning outcomes for displaced and host community learners;
Within this broader framework, we will more specifically direct our resources towards the following:
SEL and MHPSS:
- Strengthening education policies and programmes that support safe and nurturing learning environments, starting from early childhood education, including SEL as a complement to literacy and numeracy outcomes, and further strengthening the linkages between them;
- Collecting data and generating evidence to better design, target and measure the delivery of SEL interventions for schools hosting displaced learners, with a focus on the needs and priorities of stakeholders in the Global South and in our priority countries;
- Embedding SEL and MHPSS interventions into curriculum, assessments, budgets and professional development opportunities for teachers and other education workforce, including ensuring the implementation of SEL informed pedagogy;
- Promoting and ensuring the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of teachers and other education workforce with the intention of supporting their recruitment and retention, starting from early childhood education and including displaced and host community-based teachers;
- Contributing to the design and delivery of MHPSS + SEL interventions that promote equity and inclusion, considering context and the needs of the most marginalized members of displaced and host communities including pre-school aged children, girls, those living with disabilities and others.
Meaningful Participation:
- Promoting meaningful participation of people with lived experience in education initiatives that Porticus supports;
- Raising the voices of people with lived experience, starting from early learning, to participate in and influence national, regional and global decision making in and for education for displaced people.
Coordination and Collaboration:
- Aiding coordination within education and between education and other sectors to advance MHPSS + SEL;
- Encouraging predictable, complementary and sustained funding for education responses within the philanthropic and wider donor community;
- Brokering partnerships that lead to improved collaboration and coordination between different actors at different systemic levels involved in delivery of and decision making for education initiatives;
Data and Evidence:
- Investing in evidence on how displaced and host community children and youth learn with a view to inform policy and improve practice, especially for the most marginalized groups;
- Promoting evidence-backed policy making through platforms that allow for meaningful exchange between researchers and policy makers, the production of global public goods that respond to the needs of decision makers and facilitate exchange between Global North and Global South actors as well as exchange between diverse Global South actors;
- Contributing to enabling environments by providing support to regional actors to develop and/or operationalize laws, policies, and practices that advance inclusion and solutions related to education for displaced populations and their host communities taking into consideration context specific needs.