Last June 10th YouthProAktiv participated in the online event organized by Bridge 47 on COVID-19: Momentum for Transformative Education and Systemic Change? The event counted with the view of key stakeholders like Shermaine Barrett (ICAE Vice-President) and Timo Holthoff (Innovation Coordinator at VENRO).

In the first place, Alen Maletic (Global Network Coordinator at Bridge 47) conducted several interactive exercises in which participants could describe their mood regarding the COVID 19 (the most common were uncertainty and resilience), think whether COVID 19 offers more opportunities than challenges, which resulted in a technical tie, and describe the educational and activist work in the context of COVID 19, highlighting the importance of transformative education in order to overcome the crisis.

To continue with, Shermaine Barrett outlined the importance of the values of Global Citizenship, more specific, interconnectedness and interdependence, during the current health crisis. COVID 19 arised a conflict between individualism and collectivism, since the virus forced us to take collective action such as wearing a mask in public, thus people struggled with being told what to do and being deprived of a portion of their individual freedom. Hence, we must find ways to promote collectivism and a sense of responsibility to others.

From an economic perspective, the new “Gig Economy” (also known as platform work) broke with traditional employment relations, thus making workers vulnerable to income and job losses. As a result, social justice issues were raised since the vulnerability of workers’ rights was exposed.

Adopting a social perspective, since schools were forced to close, teachers and students had to continue education through online tools. As a result, several challenges were raised like parental unreadiness to supervise the work of their children due to illiteracy, the lack of digital skills in the case of some teachers and the digital gap since not all households have access to Internet or digital devices. Hence, there is a need to create an equitable and inclusive education model for all, acknowledging that technology is a permanent and growing part of education.

In the view of Timo Holthoff, our society should take a step back, slow down and try to see the bigger picture, since we do not have all the answers to the problems caused by COVID 19 yet. In addition, people tend to talk about returning to “normal”, while Timo outlines that what we knew as “normal” was actually a critical situation governed by inequality and a climate crisis. Hence, the situation was not perfect, and we should not use the COVID 19 crisis as a scapegoat. If we take a look at history, crisis are usually a catalyst for revolutionary changes, hence we should take advantage of the COVID 19 crisis instead of surrender to despair.

To conclude with, Timo recommends us to be vigilant, think about what do we want to preserve  thus nourishing the seeds of change, encouraging people to dream of another world and to take a role in its creation through collective fight and social movement, since an individual heart cannot deal with a collective pain.