Delivering Education in Conflict Zones

Last year, Aishwarya Shetty, GED’23, moved from Education Above All Foundation, where she steered learning initiatives for children in crisis zones to two new roles. At Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), she is supporting the network’s redesign so people with lived experience of crisis shape global agendas. And at Teach for Afghanistan, she serves as senior advisor, supporting fundraising, learning quality, storytelling, and sustainability, while making sure the credit and control stay where they belong.

“Afghans lead this work,” she said. “I am there to support and advocate.”

We spoke to the International Educational Development (IEDP) graduate for the spring/summer 2026 issue of Penn GSE Magazine, but there was so much about her work and her educational journey that we couldn’t fit on the printed page. So, we are sharing an extended version of our conversation below.

What drew you to Penn GSE’s International Educational Development program, and how did it shift or clarify your career trajectory?

In two words: credibility and rigor. Like a typical Indian child, I started with a bachelor's in computer science engineering. Soon after graduating, I immediately pivoted to education, through the Teach for India fellowship, and then worked in the EdTech space in India. I knew then I was going to be married to the sector, but on paper, I was still an engineer. I could be naive and say a degree doesn’t matter, but credentials do open doors that passion alone cannot.

While working at the global education level, with Education Above All Foundation, I found myself in rooms with some of the most respected leaders in the field. There were moments where I felt my knowledge gaps surface in real time, and I hated that feeling. I wasn't speaking their language yet. I wanted to learn from the best, and that's what brought me to Penn GSE's International Educational Development program. It didn't so much shift my trajectory as it gave it the rigor and grounding it had been missing.

Are there particular courses, professors, or experiences at Penn GSE that fundamentally shaped the way you approach education in emergencies?

Every single course helped me learn and, more importantly, unlearn. Dr. Amena Ghaffar-Kucher’s courses on development and migration broke down my preconceived notions of the sector. They exposed me to the power dynamics and uncomfortable truths that underpin impact work today and permanently shifted how I respect Indigenous knowledge and community capacities in everything I do.

Dr. Sharon Wolf’s “Risk and Resilience” course still guides how I build Theories of Change. Dr. Alec Gershberg's proseminar made me comfortable using evidence in decision-making; I wrote my first ever policy brief in his class and survived to tell the tale! Dr. Michelle Neuman introduced me to the world of early childhood development, a critical domain in EiE, and one I now feel confident enough to advocate for in program design. Dr. Daniel Wagner is a pioneer of EdTech in the field, and just being in his class, observing how he thinks, questions, and puts forth ideas, was a privilege in itself.

But one of my biggest takeaways has been research acumen. I took two M&E courses with Dr. Amrit Thapa and a qualitative methods course with Dr Nicole Carl. I directly apply these skills and frameworks in everything I do. I thank them about a hundred times in my head every time a data point appears in front of me!

You’ve designed and led education programs for Afghan, Ukrainian, Palestinian, and other displaced learners. How did you get into this work?

It started before Penn GSE and continued after graduation. I was working as an education specialist at Education Above All Foundation’s Innovations Directorate, where we were tasked with identifying challenges in the global education space, co-creating solutions with local partners, testing them, and scaling with governments. That role became my crash course in crisis-affected contexts.

In 2020, hundreds of Afghan children arrived in Qatar, being resettled in English-speaking countries without knowing a word of English. Parents were desperate for something practical. So we created "Survival English" modules which were later used for Afghan refugees in the U.S. and Pakistan. In Ukraine, the need was different. Children needed mental health support at scale. We co-developed a TV series with Think Equal delivering social emotional learning and mental health tools with local and international partners, broadcast for free on national channels. In Poland, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian learners suddenly entering the Polish education system, teachers were grappling with language barriers, cultural differences, and academic timelines all at once. We co-created “Integration Packages” with Positive Education Institute piloted in a hundred public schools, where Ukrainian and Polish children work on projects together, meeting learning outcomes while appreciating each other's identities. In Palestine, we developed the 40-in-One Games: 40 games on a single sheet of paper, helping children play while practicing core literacy and numeracy skills. In Lebanon, amid ongoing conflict and a near-total absence of crisis preparedness, we created and piloted “Let Kids Be Kids,” a series of play-based learning activities that build life skills and help children navigate the reality of living in crisis, with joy still intact.

Beyond crisis contexts, I also led a project reaching over five million learners in India, using project-based learning to build tribal identities alongside academic concepts. And we're currently piloting “Digi-Wise” in Peru’s public schools to help build critical thinking skills in the age of AI and social media. But I guess what is common through all of it is to meet learners where they are, with what they actually need.

Are you often in the field, or is much of your education work in crisis settings done remotely? 

For active conflict zones, the work is done remotely, and that's a reality I've made peace with, even if I haven't fully accepted it. For non-crisis settings, we do field visits. In both cases, what makes the work possible is local partners, people on the ground who co-create solutions with us, bringing a depth of contextual understanding that no remote setup can replicate. Honestly, I hope our sector evolves to a point where INGOs become redundant and where everything comes from the field instead of laptops far away.

Is there a moment from the field that stays with you? 

When working with Afghan asylum seekers in Qatar, we visited the camp to better understand the children we were designing for. One boy, about 15 years old, had a gun tattooed on his arm. I asked him about it. He said, “I want to have the real one.” When I asked why, he looked at me and said, “So no one can do anything to me.”

I think about that a lot. It made me realize that no amount of literacy or numeracy outcomes matters if we aren't using education as a tool to develop a moral compass. And it raises a question I haven't stopped asking since: what kind of world are we building, where children in Afghanistan and the United States alike equate a gun with agency and safety?

What ethical considerations guide your work when designing programs for extremely vulnerable populations?

The first principle is simple: design what is needed. A solution does not have to look fancy to be good. In fact, in crisis contexts, the obsession with innovation can be its own form of harm. I have seen organizations force-fit AI and tech lately for contexts with no steady supply of electricity. And a lot of this is dictated by what funders prioritize, so I don’t blame them either.

The second is: do not reinvent the wheel. If something already exists, adapt, partner, collaborate. Honestly, the siloed nature of the impact sector is one of my biggest frustrations. I genuinely believe it is the single biggest reason we don't move faster or do better as a sector. It is almost a competitive environment, both in terms of competition for funding and competition for specific “methods” to be scaled over the other. Everything I create is free and open-source, and I deliberately prioritize low or no-tech solutions, because that is what actually reaches the last mile in crisis contexts.

Do no harm is non-negotiable. Every piece of content we produce that touches students or teachers goes through multiple rounds of review by child counsellors and psychiatrists. And we always, always co-develop with local partners because they hold the contextual knowledge and community connection that we never will. Without them, we are in the dark.

The tension we navigate most often is speed versus quality. In a crisis, you cannot wait a year to complete a needs assessment; children are out of school now. So, we've learned to do rapid consultations at the onset of a crisis, with ministries, local NGOs, parents, teachers, community ambassadors, all compressed into weeks rather than months. It is not perfect. But it is honest, and it moves.

What misconceptions do people have about education in emergencies—and what do you wish they knew?

You are not the savior. The savior complex is obviously philosophically wrong, but more importantly operationally damaging. Capacities and expertise on the ground existed before a crisis, and survives through it. What communities in crisis need is not someone to swoop in with a pre-packaged program designed thousands of miles away. They need resources and money to accelerate their work, yes. They need political will, absolutely. But more than anything, they need the world to get out of the way of their own recovery and trust them to lead it.

Don’t get me wrong. Funders and international bodies have an important role to play. But those roles are of enablers and catalysts instead of being the heroes of someone else’s story. They bring immense credibility and an ability to scale what local bodies have already proven. All this is needed. So I guess, what I wish more people knew is that the most important thing you can do in this sector is make yourself redundant. If you have done your job well, the community you are serving no longer needs you.

If you were speaking to current Penn GSE students who want to work in humanitarian education, what advice would you give them?

[These] are things I wish someone told me! First, get a specific, validated skill set. Passion is not enough, and the sector is full of passionate people. What can you do that is demonstrable and needed? And the good news is that EiE has space for an enormous range of skills, from research, program design, and pedagogy to fundraising, communications, advocacy, policy, M&E, technology, community mobilization, and plenty more. Penn can help you converge—exploit all the resources you have in Philly!

Second, know your positionality before you enter a room. Where are you from? What have you not lived through? How does that shape what you see, what you assume, and what you miss? It is a practice you return to constantly, for the entirety of your career. Exercise this muscle in the work you produce at Penn.

Third, the sector will break your heart. It is underfunded, politically complicated, and often moves far too slowly for the urgency it requires. You will feel frustrated and cynical more often than not. Build in intentional time for filling your cup and to live a life beyond work. I learned this the hard way.

Fourth, find your community early. It will carry you further than any formal application can. Attend conferences, join working groups and communities of practice, reach out to professionals and authors of pieces you enjoyed, stay updated on what is happening in the sector. The Penn GSE network is a gift. Use it.

What’s an image, sound, or moment from the field that you return to when you need to remember why you do this work?

It is actually a number. Over 520 million children, more than one in five of the world's children, are currently living in conflict zones. This is no more a learning crisis at the margins. It is at the center of our world, and growing, and too big to ignore. It makes the work feel less like a niche specialization and more like one of the most urgent, under-resourced challenges of our time. On the days when the bureaucracy is exhausting, or the politics of aid feel impossible, I come back to that number. One in five. And I get back to it.