Although youth tend to have milder symptoms from the COVID-19 virus, the pandemic has brought unprecedented changes and challenges into their lives and particularly their mental health. Pandemic-related school closures have disrupted their learning and isolated them from peers.  

The COVID-19 pandemic widened pre-existing opportunity, skills, and achievement gaps, with devastating impacts on our future generations. It has been more than two years and a half since the pandemic has changed the lives of 165 million students in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), who, on average, lost 237 days of school and faced tremendous learning losses.

The issue of education financing must be discussed and included in the public agenda because inaction or inertia will not mean preservation of the status quo but greater exclusion and deterioration of the social and productive fabric

When schools worldwide began shifting from face-to-face to virtual classrooms due to the pandemic, educators were forced to rethink and redesign their learning environments – essentially overnight. While technology in schools had been rising for years, few teachers had extensive experience in conducting learning in a mostly online environment. 

Over the years, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Bank-financed projects’ ability to conduct in-person supervision has become significantly hindered in Haiti. Indeed, the education sector has noticed that children are not attending schools due to dangers associated with movement, school constructions are delayed due to materials and people unable to pass through gang-controlled areas, and services to schools such as the delivery of goods and services are hindered due to generalized insecurity.

My second granddaughter was born during one of the pandemic’s worst moments. Because her mother is a pediatrician, she obtained one of the first COVID-19 vaccines offered to health workers. Yet she approached the institutional birth with trepidation due to the danger of exposing the newborn to the virus that surely circulated in the hospital environment.  

It was winter in the northern hemisphere. Low temperatures and pandemic lockdowns both forced life to be conducted indoors and the super contagious new variant of the virus spread relentlessly.    

We know that the key to innovation for any of the challenges faced by Latin America and the Caribbean today is collaboration among diverse actors and the exchange of experiences, and the development and education of the youngest children is no exception.