The EJS Center has been heartened to see the efforts of our board members, mentors and Amujae Leaders to help combat the spread of COVID-19 in their countries and communities. During this time of crisis, we will be sharing insights from leaders within our network, which may be instructive for others.

To that end, we wanted to share recent insights from George Kronnisanyon Werner, a board member of the EJS Center who served as the Liberian Minister of Education during Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s presidency.

Writing in a blog post for the Global Partnership for Education, he shared his reflections on the Ebola crisis and how lessons from Liberia’s experience could inform coronavirus response in the education sector.

“Schools around the globe are closed. More than a billion school children are being deprived of their education. And for some of these students in particular, there is a grim familiarity to all this… Ebola was an economic and humanitarian catastrophe for Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, claiming more than 11,000 lives and keeping children out of school for 10 months…

But in and amongst its terrible legacy are important lessons for policy-makers about how to keep children safe and learning during a crisis like the one we are currently facing – and what to do when it passes.”

Read the full article here.