Arigatou International – End Child Poverty has released its annual report for the year 2020/2021, covering from April 2020 to March 2021. While introducing the report to readers, Fred Nyabera, the Director Arigatou International – End Child Poverty noted that,
“The year 2020 will forever be memorialized as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented global crises in its wake. Suddenly, children across the world had this new unseen monster disrupting every aspect of their lives and threatening to cast a dark and powerful impact on their childhoods.”
This new reality not only severely disrupted critical services including learning and play, but also exposed millions of already vulnerable children to a multiple dip of adversity. Hardly six months into the pandemic, about 1.6 billion children were out of school, and hundreds of millions of families and households were experiencing severe disruptions in their livelihoods. It was estimated that by the end of 2020 over 117 million more children were newly poor, according to the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty.
To this end, the report has largely focused on our interventions towards getting children to the center of COVID-19 response. The report, thus, details End Child Poverty’s interventions towards protecting, empowering and supporting children in the context of and under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also reports on results, footprints and impacts with regards to; child participation, community mobilization towards ending child poverty, peace building and building partnerships and synergies.