School students and teachers in Indonesia were supported by ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ through devices and training for virtual learning. Credit: NGO Yayasan Emmanuel, an organisation ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ partners with in Indonesia.

Across the world, the pandemic has left many people facing new and unforeseen challenges. For children and young people, a disruption to their education meant they switched pens and workbooks for a virtual classroom online. But with 1.6 billion children lacking access to the necessary technology for remote learning, this left the most marginalised groups in society at a disadvantage.

As part of our global COVID-19 response, and our commitment to support SDG4 Quality Education through our Community Affairs program, we have supported disadvantaged students around the world by providing them with laptops and hardware to enable them to access learning.

238 laptops were given to students who did not have a suitable device to study on in Australia.

Enabling remote learning

  • In Germany, we donated 104 tablets to our Community Affairs partner school Weißfrauenschule. We also covered the cost of teacher training, helping teachers adapt their teaching to the new online world.
  • In the UK, we donated hundreds of devices from our exit of 5 Golden Lane as well as coordinating the donation of 100 laptops from Dell to our flagship education partner, The Bridge Academy, Hackney. We also supported our Hackney primary school partners with the donation of 160 devices to support remote learning. Despite being one of the world’s richest nations, an estimated 1 million children in the UK still do not have adequate access to a device or connectivity at home.
  • For children without families, our Poland office donated 40 laptops to Wroclaw Center for Care and Education to enable the children to continue to learn remotely.
  • We also donated 60,000 USD to the Australia Business and Community Network’s (ABCN) ‘Laptops 4 Learning’ initiative to provide 238 laptops to students who did not have a suitable device to study on. ABCN partners low socio-economic status schools with leading businesses to empower young Australians to reach their potential in the future world of work. The laptops contributed to closing the longer-term digital divide faced by ABCN’s most vulnerable students. Similar initiatives to provide devices were also launched in Hong Kong and Singapore.
  • ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ support in Indonesia enabled teachers to deliver online learning to over 1,000 children in extremely poor and rural communities.

ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ support for the fight against COVID

For the most disadvantaged in our local communities, the effects of the pandemic will be felt for a long time - and in an accelerating digital world, children without access to remote learning risk being left further behind. Working with our Community Affairs partners, ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ support has helped ensure the most disadvantaged students are not left out of the virtual classroom.

In the UK, students at ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ partner The Bridge Academy received laptops to support remote learning.

You may also like: