15 Challenges in Supporting Disadvantaged Children’s Access to Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experience of a Romanian Nonprofit Organization
15 Challenges in Supporting Disadvantaged Children’s Access to Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Experience of a Romanian Nonprofit Organization

Summary/Abstract: Due to the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerability of the children from families with disadvantaged backgrounds increased, and the risk of their exposure to poverty heightened. The subsequent closure of schools brought also an increased risk for their school dropout, since their parents’ financial and educational resources were not sufficient to assist them in keeping up with the requirments of an online education. The intervention of organizations providing educational support activities for disadvantaged children was crucial in assisting them to remain engaged in education and prevent school dropout. However, due to external factors such as the re-orientation of sponsors to health programs and the rapidly shifting regulations imposed by the central authorities on educational and schooling activities, these interventions did not go smoothly. On the contrary, the nonprofits providing educational support programs to disadvantaged children encountered many challenges along the way, during this very short period of time. In the current paper, based on the case-study of a Romanian organization providing educational support services to vulnerable children, we propose an incursion into the 15 challenges it faced during the pandemic, in its effort to continue assisting children from socially and economically vulnerable groups to remain engaged in education during the pandemic. This examination also reveals the measures and strategies employed by the organization to overcome these challenges.

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