The Pacific shows what long-term partnership can achieve, and why it matters. Only 26% of people in Oceania, excluding Australia and New Zealand, used the internet in 2025, the lowest share of any region (UN DESA, 2026). About a third of young Pacific women and a quarter of young men are not in education, employment or training, rural young women most affected (COL, 2026).
What the first phase delivered
With support from New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, COL and Pacific partners completed the first phase of the Pacific Partnership for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (2020–2025). More than 7,200 educators enrolled in professional development, and some 5,900 young people who were outside education, employment and training completed community-based skills training: a 63% completion rate, with women making up almost two-thirds of participants, at about NZD 81 per trainee. Partners adapted more than 300 open educational resources to local curricula, and after Vanuatu’s 2024 earthquake the learning platform was back within a week.
Results reached across the region. In South Tarawa, Kiribati, more than 240 young people completed skills courses; the Coalition for Education Solomon Islands trained 145 young people, including 93 women and 39 with disabilities; and in Naoero, 33 teachers were trained in learner support for open and distance learning, alongside a national OER collection site and an online TVET toolkit.
The first phase also taught a hard lesson: too few projects found a permanent place in national systems, budgets or qualifications frameworks.
A ten-year investment, 2026–2036
The next phase is a ten-year partnership with New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, delivered with the Pacific Centre for Flexible and Open Learning for Development (PACFOLD) at the University of the South Pacific, across Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Naoero, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. It will move proven approaches into national systems, budgets and qualifications frameworks, so that by 2036 Pacific institutions own, finance and deliver them, with COL in support.
The sequence is deliberate: “Ownership comes before scale, and evidence comes before expansion” (COL, 2026). Five design gates, covering safeguarding, recognition pathways, institutional ownership, climate content and evidence readiness, must be passed before delivery scales in any country.
The work has three strands: pathways for young people outside education and work, through community learning hubs, foundation programmes, recognition of prior learning and mentoring; recognised credentials for teachers in open and distance learning, STEM and climate-responsive teaching; and stackable micro-credentials in green skills such as solar installation and climate-resilient construction. At least half of all participants will be women, and at least 65% in the youth stream.
