Latest news

We are pleased to share some great news from our home town. The University of Chichester has awarded our CEO and Co-founder, Rachel Bentley OBE, an Honorary Doctorate of Education. Since 1990, Rachel has led Children on the Edge, an international child rights organisation based right here in Chichester. This recognition reflects over three decades of work defending the rights of marginalised children and creating access to education in some of the toughest environments in the world.

After a decade in displacement camps, families returning to their villages in the Kachin region are taking the lead. In their own words, children, parents and teachers share how they are carrying early learning models back home. They are rebuilding classrooms piece by piece, setting up learning centres for as few as two toddlers, and ensuring their youngest thrive as communities start fresh.

In 2025–2026, Children on the Edge demonstrated that even in the toughest environments, investing in local people creates sustainable change. We have tested, refined, and used low-cost interventions on the margins, always sharing them openly so governments and international bodies can scale them where they are most needed.

As we prepared to introduce Early Childhood Education in Karamoja with our community-led cluster learning model, we needed to find ways to make our play-based learning accessible for all and utilised AI to help. However, we soon realised that AI didn’t have the functionality we needed, and in this situation a human touch was still best!

Wardah Yusuf, Early Years Specialist with Children on the Edge Africa, reflects on her first visit to Karamoja - one of Uganda’s poorest regions. After years of developing child-led, play-based education in Kyaka II, she and her team are introducing their innovative ‘cluster learning’ model to remote rural communities.

The Rohingya Zoban mobile app has officially launched within the world's largest refugee camp, designed to help users learn the Rohingya language from anywhere in the world.

After many years developing the play-based elements of our early childhood education programme in Kyaka II refugee settlement, Uganda, our team were delighted to be asked to contribute to the government’s new policy with suggestions on play-based learning.

The FIFA Football World Cup is in full swing, and this Sunday, Haiti will take to the pitch to play their first-round match. We were especially excited to see two of the players named in the squad - midfielder Leverton Pierre and forward Louisius Deedson - as their professional football careers started from a small community football project in Port-au-Prince, which Children on the Edge supported.

After more than a decade of displacement, families in Kachin State, Myanmar, are finally beginning to return home - and they are taking our early childhood education model with them.

Decades of state violence have suppressed Rohingya written language, completely fracturing their children’s education. This blog highlights the movement to fight this cultural erasure. Reflecting on the ‘Learning in Exile’ event at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library, we look at how activists and NGOs are using the written Hanifi script to bring linguistic justice and mother-tongue schooling to Rohingya refugees.

Since 2021, children at Glebelands secondary school have been supporting Children on the Edge by organising a huge variety of different fundraising activities, including non-school uniform days, cake sales, raffles, baking competitions, concerts and special events. Together they have raised more than £10,500 to help Children on the Edge provide education and protection for children living in some of the world’s toughest situations.

Three years since her first visit to Kyaka II refugee settlement in Uganda Early years education specialist Judith Gallimore reflects on the cluster learning journey and how the programme in Uganda has changed over the past three years.