Overcoming Trauma to Learn and Grow in Tigray
This blog was originally posted on the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) website and can be viewed here.
In Tigray, Ethiopia, programs supported by the Luminos Fund help thousands of out-of-school children catch up to grade level, reintegrate into government schools and prepare for lifelong learning.
Nahom doesn’t talk much about his family’s journey fleeing war in northern Ethiopia. He was too young to do much of the walking. For hundreds of miles, he was carried, passed among his mother, father and uncles as his family desperately tried to reach safety.
“Everything happened suddenly,” recalls Nahom’s mother Shishay. “There was shooting and we didn’t know what to do. The only possibility was to leave home… It was difficult. We traveled from village to village on foot.”
After several months, Nahom’s family arrived in Mekelle—the capital of the Tigray region. Nahom is one of over 1 million internally displaced people in Tigray. From 2020 to 2022, war devastated the region and disrupted education for millions of children, leaving over 1.5 million children out of school for 3 years.
“I remember the sound of shooting and feeling afraid,” says Nahom quietly.
Relaunching Accelerated Learning in Tigray
After a peace agreement was announced, the Luminos Fund moved quickly to relaunch our education program in Tigray in partnership with the Tigray Regional Education Bureau, building on our long history of operating in the region prior to the conflict. Luminos commissioned a study to help inform how to tailor our program to the unique learning needs of children now.
The study highlighted the impact of the war, with alarming results. There was evidence of significant learning loss and deep psychological trauma among children, parents and teachers. Survey responses indicated 62% of children expected that they would be killed and 72% experienced shooting at a very close range. In the words of Dr. Kiros Guesh, Head of Tigray’s Regional Education Bureau, “Many of our children have seen all the evils.”
Read the original report summary, “Examining Levels of Learning Loss, Trauma, and Resilience in Children, Parents, and Teachers in Tigray, Ethiopia,” ↑
Our students’ well-being is the heart of everything we do at Luminos. In response to the study results and in addition to joyful, foundational learning, our Tigray program includes: trauma-healing support, an emphasis on socio-emotional learning and midday meals to address the significant food insecurity in the region.
Nahom’s teacher, Filagot, helps Nahom’s group during class. “I’m building their base,” says Filagot on teaching his students. “This is the foundation so that they can use it in later years.” (Photo: Mara Chan/Luminos Fund)
Joyful Classrooms to Learn and Heal
At the beginning of the Luminos program, Nahom, like many of his classmates, was shy, lonely and afraid according to his teacher. Now 9-year-old Nahom participates actively and excels in math. He has also built friendships with his classmates that have been like a lifeline, making him eager to come to class and learn.
“I’m safe now,” says Nahom.
Nahom’s brightly decorated Luminos classroom (located within a government school compound) is a place of joy and light for his classmates and him, the majority of whom are internally displaced. Letters of the Tigrinya alphabet cover the walls in a rainbow of paper as students eagerly raise their hands to read in front of the class.
Nahom and his classmates are not only learning foundational reading, writing and math skills that will serve them for life, but are also developing socio-emotional skills and working towards healing.
“At the beginning of the school year, the kids were lonely,” reflects Nahom’s teacher, Filagot. “We had 25 children and they were all individuals. They were not interacting with one another. Now they love and respect each other—they even walk to school together. They’re all friends.”
Nahom has formed close friendships with Luminos classmates Mariamawit, Saron, and Belaynesh (left to right), and now walks to and from school with them every day. (Photo: Mara Chan/Luminos Fund)
“What gets me out of bed each morning is the resilience of the children. Despite all the distractions, all the trauma, all the loss… They still believe in education.”
Dr. Kiros Guesh, Head of the Tigray Regional Education Bureau
Shishay also follows her son’s progress closely: “At first Nahom didn’t know any letters or numbers. Now he reads. He knows the letters and can identify them. He identifies numbers and can do addition and subtraction. His behavior has improved. They used to play by making pretend guns, but they have stopped doing that now. He used to be aggressive when kids wanted to play, but he’s not anymore.”
Nahom also frequently helps his classmates when they struggle. “I like coming to school to learn. I want to be the top of my class,” says Nahom. Outside of school, he gathers younger children in his neighborhood and teaches them what he has learned.
“What gets me out of bed each morning is the resilience of the children,” says Dr. Kiros of the Tigray Regional Education Bureau. “They still believe in education — despite all the distractions, all the trauma, all the loss. They still believe in education.”
Hope for the Future
One year after Luminos’ program relaunched in Tigray, new research shows students participating in the accelerated learning program have made incredible progress.
Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have decreased by 53%, the number of students experiencing severe hunger has declined by 48% and children have also showed positive improvements in social and emotional skills.
Furthermore, nearly all students (94%) in the accelerated learning program have successfully transitioned into Grade 4, equipped with the skills to continue their education.
These findings underscore the importance of addressing both psychological and foundational learning skills to help children recover from conflict and trauma.
As another school year progresses in Tigray, there continue to be significant challenges and needs. Luminos’ mission of ensuring all children have equal access to joyful, foundational learning—especially for those shut out of education by crisis, poverty or discrimination—has never been more important. We look forward to serving more children like Nahom this school year.
Nahom and his mother, Shishay, outside their one-room home in Mekelle. (Photo: Mara Chan/Luminos Fund)
A GPE partner country since 2004, Ethiopia has received close to $700 million in GPE grant support to transform its education system with a focus on expanding access to education, including through community awareness programs on education barriers for girls and children with disabilities, as well as improving learning outcomes through quality teacher training, supporting school leaders, establishing quality assurance mechanisms, and aligning teaching and learning materials to curriculum.
Ethiopia is part of the GPE Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) Africa 19 hub and has launched the Basic Education Network Ethiopia (BEN-E) through funding from Education Out Loud—GPE’s dedicated fund for civil society advocacy and social accountability.
Read the Luminos Fund’s report summary, “Recovering from Trauma: Evaluating the Effects of Social-Emotional Learning and Activity-Based Teaching Methods in Tigray, Ethiopia.”
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The Luminos Fund provides transformative education programs to thousands of out-of-school children, helping them to catch up to grade level, reintegrate into government schools and prepare for lifelong learning. In just one school year, out-of-school children learn how to read, write, and do math–to learn how to learn–through a joyful, activity-based curriculum. To date, Luminos has helped over 277,787 children secure a second chance to learn.
To learn more about how to support Luminos’ work in Tigray, please contact us at tigray@luminosfund.org.
To learn more about our Ethiopia program, click here.
Measuring Transformative Learning Gains: Key Findings from the IDinsight RCT of Luminos’ Liberia Program
Since 2016, the Luminos Fund’s one-year catch-up education program in Liberia has reached more than 17,660 out-of-school children. Luminos is always laser-focused on data to measure our program’s impact on children’s learning and, today, we are delighted to share the excellent results of a new IDinsight randomized controlled trial (RCT) of our Liberia program.
The RCT confirms that children make dramatic learning gains during our program. In the 2022-23 school year, Luminos students read four times more words per minute (WPM) and showed a two-times increase in addition and numeracy skills by the end of our one-year program, compared to the control group. Data from the RCT also shows that the Luminos program is one of only three education programs that is both transformational for children’s learning and cost-effective. Our team is immensely proud of these findings, which are a testament to our tireless focus on helping the most vulnerable children learn.
The Luminos Fund presented key findings from the RCT during our seventh annual U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) week luncheon in New York on September 19, 2023.
1. Luminos students achieve substantial learning gains year over year, even as the program reach has doubled in scale.
During the 2022-23 school year in Liberia, Luminos students progressed from reading an average of 4 WPM at the start of the program to 29 WPM by the end of the program. This remarkable increase is 21 WPM more than students in the control group gained. This finding mirrors external evaluation data from our two prior program years in Liberia when children achieved similar results. In this same three-year period, our program doubled from serving 2,400 students in the 2020-21 school year to 5,010 students in the 2022-23 school year. The RCT also finds that Luminos students achieve substantial gains in numeracy skills compared to the control group.
2. In one year, a child in the Luminos Liberia program learns 90% of what the average Liberian will learn in their lifetime.
The learning that Luminos students achieve in just one school year is almost as much as the average Liberian achieves over their entire life. No other externally evaluated program in Liberia has come close to the learning gains that IDinsight documented through the RCT of the Luminos program. [1]
This statistic not only highlights the remarkable impact of the Luminos program but also underscores the significant challenges facing the education system in Liberia. Luminos is honored to have such a strong presence in Liberia, including our partnership with government, to help more children achieve similarly remarkable results in the years ahead.
3. Uniquely, the Luminos program is both transformational and cost-effective.
The RCT results confirm that the Luminos program is one of only three education programs that have been shown to be both transformational for children’s learning and cost-effective. This is measured using data from the 2020 Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel “Smart Buys” report on learning gains and USAID cost-effectiveness metrics.
Why these two variables? An intervention’s cost is vitally important: even the most transformative education program may have limited ability to scale if the cost per child is extremely expensive. Equally, the total amount of learning achieved in a given intervention is vitally important. Foundational literacy interventions only become catalytic if they enable children to reach the threshold of fluent reading. A program that moves children from 3 to 6 WPM could appear cost-effective if it was delivered for a low cost, but would not have any deep or meaningful impact on that child. Thus, we mapped interventions by how they performed on these two variables.
The Luminos program is one of only three education programs that has been shown to be both transformational for children’s learning and cost-effective. Source: USAID, Early Grade Reading Barometer, GEEAP
(A grim side note that makes us all the more proud of the rarified results Luminos is achieving: A staggering 40% of evaluations in the education sector show no effect on student learning. Lots of work remains in the global community’s quest to ensure every child is receiving a high-quality education.)
Looking Ahead: Expanding Our Reach
The Luminos Fund’s impact on children’s learning is only possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cartier Philanthropy, Dubai Cares, Echidna Giving, Legatum, The LEGO Foundation, Mulago Foundation, Pousaz Philanthropies, UBS Optimus Foundation, USAID, and others. Luminos is scaling our model as broadly as possible, funding permitting, advancing our unwavering mission to ensure all children have equal access to joyful, foundational learning, especially those shut out of education by crisis, poverty, or discrimination. We are grateful to our global community of supporters, partners, and advisors for joining us on this important journey.
James Earl Kiawoin, Luminos Liberia Country Manager, presents on the Liberia program.
Jeff McManus, Senior Economist at IDinsight, presents the RCT data on the Luminos Liberia program.
Caitlin Baron, Luminos CEO, concluding the RCT data presentation.
[1] The Learning Adjusted Years of School expresses learning in comparison to what would be achieved in a high-quality education system within a year. This enables the comparison of learning outcomes across different contexts.
