Eye Media

The outbreak of COVID-19 had inconvenienced learning globally. Due to the restrictions put in place by the Ministry of Health and the world health organization to prevent the spread of coronavirus, schools are closed down hence altering learning in several parts of the world. Eye Media proposes to reach out to learners in the community through radio and online programs. Eye Media will implement the project activities by providing lessons to learners from their homes. Eye Media will invite primary and secondary teachers with consultations with the Ministry of Education to the radio station so that they can deliver lessons on-air as learners listen to the teaching from their respective places. Eye Media shall provide solar radios to the beneficiaries across the country. Learners will use the radios as their learning aid as teachers shall be delivering lessons from the radio stations and access lesson contents on Social media platforms.

This project shall address the challenge of the education gap caused by COVID-19. As it is becoming difficult for learners to access education in their regular classrooms, Eye Media proposes to facilitate the lesson delivery in schools by supporting the teachers through radio and social media paltforms. During this time of the pandemic, learners are barred from attending lessons in schools due to the covid-19 restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. This problem affected thousands of learners across the globe in regards to performances and skills building. Many sources talk about the impact of covid-19 on education.

According to Sage Journals Author Gateway, the COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in human history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 200 countries. The closures of schools, institutions, and other learning spaces have impacted more than 94% of the world’s student population. (Sumitra Pokhrel, 2021). In addition, Robert Jenkins, UNICEF Global Chief of Education in his latest speech on COVID-19 & Education, he recommended that we should establish a routine that factors in radio, Social media and television as tools for learning in the time of coronavirus (Robert Jenkins, 2020). 

Eye Media’s solution to this problem is to introduce a distant learning in order to reach out to learners in both the remote areas and towns of South Sudan. The technology that we shall employ to deliver lessons to these learners is radio and our social media platforms. On radio, we shall invite teachers from various schools in coordination with ministry of education to come to our station and deliver lessons on-air as learners will listen from their respective homes. The same lessons can be shared on our social media platform so that learners can also watch and read the content at their convenient time. In order to make the project effective, Eye Media shall procure some solar radios and distribute them to learners in the community. The first priority of radio provision will go to vulnerable learners. Our staff shall reach out to school administrators and the ministry of education so that they can help in identifying the beneficiaries of the program since they already had an existing data in their schools. The project team shall design a schedule for all the activities to be carried out in the implementation period. 

Eye Media’s solution to address the challenges encountered during covid-19 in regards to education will serve learners who are out of school due to the coronavirus. The continuous learning through radio and online platforms will equip learners with enough knowledge and skills, preparing them for examinations and career building in specific areas. Eye Media shall reach out to more a thousand learners across the country, given our reach. We shall use our main radio FM in Juba to broadcast lessons connecting to Eye Radio’s 7 repeaters across the country. We shall also use our social media platforms to deliver lessons to learners across the globe. Eye Media targets school children who are not able to access learning through regular school activities especially in the remote areas of South Sudan and beyond. We are looking at how they will improve their skills in different areas and performance improvement as well. We are having an independent program at our radio station that talks about Coronavirus. Some of the components like the effect of coronavirus on education are captured through Vox pops, radio drama, Talkshows and DJ mentions. As our presenter is on air, we receive calls from listeners across the country on coronavirus and its effects. It is these feedbacks that we discovered that there’s need to initiate radio & social media learning program. This program can be a solution to the problem learners are facing in the community.

The problem that this project is addressing is the inaccessibility of learning by learners in time of coronavirus pandemic. This is a great challenge the globe is generally experiencing in providing education services to learners effectively. This solution is relevant to this dimension because the proposal seeks to create a bridge learning program that can facilitate learning in this difficult time. Through the radio and social media platform, teachers will be teaching on-air as the learners listen to them. The teacher-learner feedback session shall also be incorporated to allow the learners to answer some of the questions raised during lessons.

I selected this stage because Eye Media is an established Media organization in South Sudan that runs Eye Radio. It is rated as the number one radio station in the country. Eye Radio reports evidence-based news and produces programs on various thematic areas i.e. Gender Equality, Human rights, CRC, and many other topics. So, initiating a radio & social media learning platform will be a good project for Eye Media because of its availability of resources and facilities such as radio stations and social media platforms. Eye Radio covers 7 states in South Sudan and reaches out to thousands of audiences through social media pages i.e. website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Therefore, children from these 7 states shall be the direct beneficiaries of this project.