Through the Education Pathways to Peace programme (“Pathways”) in the Philippines, Palladium has worked in partnership with the Government, supporting conflict-sensitive quality education services in Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), an area with the country’s poorest education learning outcomes. More than 860,000 primary school students were affected by Covid-19-related education disruptions. Working with the BARMM’s new inter-agency Covid-19 taskforce, the Pathways programme has drawn on its adaptive programming approach to help address the impacts of the pandemic at the education front line.
Pathways helps create a multi-platform communication system and deploys offline and online strategies to better support the Ministry of Basic and Higher Education’s Covid-19 Learning Continuity Plan. This includes the use of SMS and text blasts, two-way radio, social media, broader mass media platforms, and message dissemination through community level partners and volunteers. In October 2020, Pathways provided communications support to address a Covid-19 induced enrolment crisis through these strategies. As a result, enrolment had climbed from 72.5% to 88% (from 662,340 students to 803,204 students) by November 2020.
