Abstract

As humanitarian crises intensify, more than 234 million children continue to
face severe disruptions to their learning, wellbeing, and development.
Strengthening foundational learning and social-emotional learning
(SEL) has therefore become a global priority. Yet practitioners, donors,
and policymakers still lack clear, contextualized evidence on what works, for
whom, and at what cost in emergency and protracted crisis settings.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and partners will
convene a session that brings together global experts, country practitioners,
and researchers to explore cutting-edge evidence and scalable solutions for
foundational literacy, numeracy, and SEL in humanitarian contexts.

The session will
spotlight key strategies from the Association for the Development of Africa (ADEA)
and country examples, including the IRC’s flagship PlayMatters initiative and an
innovative approach to integrating SEL and Learning through Play into teacher
professional development in Jordan. It will also present new findings from the ERICC
(Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis) programme, featuring results
from 60 impact evaluations with school-aged children in crisis-affected
contexts. These analyses identify the impact and cost-effectiveness of a wide
range of education interventions, including ALPs, EdTech, MHPSS, remedial
learning, and teacher professional development, and offer critical lessons for
improving learning outcomes in humanitarian settings.

Participants will engage in an interactive dialogue on
integrating SEL within foundational literacy and numeracy programming,
strengthening implementer capacity, proving measurement, and designing
cost-effective, scalable approaches that deliver meaningful learning and
wellbeing gains for children living through conflict and crisis.