At the United Nations Global Refugee Forum this week in Geneva, Switzerland, the Jacobs Foundation pledged to support Colombia’s efforts to increase quality education for refugee and host community children. This will be accomplished through our support for Colombia Evidencia Potencial en Educacion, a multistakeholder initiative that aims to strengthen evidence in education policy and practice.
“At the Jacobs Foundation we believe that education, especially quality education that is based in evidence, is one of the most powerful means we have to support the transition of refugees from the status of victims to fully integrated, contributing members of society.”
Our co-CEO Fabio Segura attended the side event ‘Securing Sustainable Futures,’ where he announced 50 million CHF in funding to focus on the effective development of foundational skills such as literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional learning in Colombia. Through this Global Compact Refugee Pledge, we seek to create multi-stakeholder partnerships with the government of Colombia to ensure inclusive education at national, territorial, and local levels, including some of the most at-risk and least advantaged populations that have large numbers of displaced adults and children.
Through our support of Colombia Evidencia Potencial en Educacion, we will focus on interventions that help both teachers and parental training, ensuring that there is adequate training to support the most at-risk children. This support has the potential to impact almost 2 million children aged 3 to 12, of which 11% are displaced and/or affected by conflict. It will also aim to empower 132,000 teachers.