Job no: 556020
Contract type: Consultant
Duty Station: Georgetown
Level: Consultancy
Location: United States, Denmark, United Kingdom, Belize, Jamaica, Eastern Caribbean
Categories: Education, Research, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
For every child, a chance to learn
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT
The COVID -19 pandemic continues to reveal continuing debilitating effects on the world’s population making the future uncertain for many groups. Many can relate to the direct consequences of the disease and the interruption in essential services and increasing poverty and inequality. Fewer might recognise the devastating impact of the virus on children and adolescents. The severe global economic recession is impoverishing children and compounding deep pre-existing inequalities and exclusion, as the most disadvantaged households struggle to cope with the damaging fallout from the loss of jobs, livelihoods, incomes, and social services. The disruptions to essential services for children such as early childhood services, education, health care, nutrition, and child protection interventions - places which are the eyes and ears of many vulnerable children - become difficult to access and cause greater harm to children. The most noticeable harmful effect are the added risks in child health, increased poverty, intensified lag or developmental delay, parental stress, increased risk of violence against children, the widening of the digital divide and loss of learning. Undoubtedly, the significant loss of learning during school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic across the world has put millions of children and adolescents at risk of dropping out of school or enrolling late in any educational pathway.
Despite the significant efforts made by countries in the region, the World Bank estimates that children and adolescents who have returned to school have been delayed, on average, between one and 1.8 years. This could mean a 12% reduction in their income-generating capacity.
