School closure means closure to opportunities. School serves as a place where sometimes known as the second home of children and teens. School provides knowledge, skills, conseling, food, social circle and many more. And it is the fairest platform that we can find in the world.
Without school, learning goes online and the students stay at home. To carry out online learning, a stable internet connection is needed, a compatible device for the study platform is needed and higher cost for network services are needed.
In other words, the education margin is widen. Poorer students who could barely afford digital gadgets and services are facing hard times. Some of them gave up on learning and help their family to work. Some of them are juggling between part time jobs and learning. Some of them used most of the money to purchase these “basic needs” but yet find the connection being unstable, the laptop being slow and they can hardly catch up with peers.
We also know, school is not just a place for education, but a place to build healthy personality and strong community. Not every child is fortunate enough to be born in a family with healthy relationship. These children are then being exposed to more violence, distrust and toxic thoughts.
To make things worse, they now do not have a place to get emotional support and motivational boost from the school. They also lost the chance of getting support and counseling from the school. Eventually, it could mean a bitter turning point towards the child’s life.
You think only children’s life are affected? There are teachers, staffs, workers in the school that rely on the job to sustain their family. The gardeners, the cleaners, the canteen uncles and aunties, they could not clean the school, water the plants, cook the food online. They lost their job and income.
When one door closes, another opens. School closure has caused closure of doors towards bunch of opportunities. We can help these people to open the doors together. Don’t let pandemic opportunities inaccessible by the less fortunate and the needy. Show your support and care by accompanying them through their hard times.
There are ways to spread the love such as supporting their businesses, give them discounts, donate needed items, motivate them and always be on their side.
From The Peer Movement, we are initiating a campaign of books donation to children in schools. You can donate money to us for buying the books and stationeries for them too. And we are here to encourage you to take a look at your old books, donate them if they can still be read and used. Stay tuned to our website for more information about the campaign.