Systemic Education Reform Program

Organizations working in school education

For organizations already into school education, our grants aim to deepen capacities or build additional capacities to take the work to the next level. This could mean any of the following:

• Building capabilities in specific areas of focus within education by working on the ground with support from experienced organizations, resources, and people.
• Consolidating the work done so far into approaches and models of engagement that can be expanded, scaled, and shared
• Building capacities to become a resource supplier for other organizations in education in a specific area of focus/expertise within the education

Community Organizations

We provide small grants to established organizations with a strong community presence, working on one or more aspects of community development and empowerment, and having a desire to work in school education, specifically to improve the public education system in their areas of operation, to do the following:

• Build an education-focused team of 2-4 people
• Build their capacity to work in school education, particularly the public education system, through on-the-ground work and specific capacity building opportunities

It would be good to either have some team members with existing teaching experience or for the organization to have had some experience in the school education space, including, but not limited to teaching-learning aspects

Established Organizations not in the education sector

For organizations with expertise and track record in other areas of social activities such as health, environment, livelihood, human rights, governance, etc. or knowledge domains such as natural and human/social sciences, we provide grants to enable these organizations to bring their expertise and learning into the area of school education. The grants would be to do the following:

• Build a core team to work in the area of school education. An ideal team would include people from an education background as well as domain experts
• Develop an understanding and experience of working in school education. This experience will then help the organization understand the unique challenges and devise appropriate strategies for a deeper engagement to improve school education by incorporating relevant aspects of domain knowledge and capabilities
• Enable the organizations to work with other educational organizations on specific domain areas to bolster their understanding of the work

Within each category of organization, the support is aimed at helping them build deeper capacities to work in school education.  We support organizations through:

• Financial Grants – Our financial support is aimed at enabling organizations to work in a focused manner to improve the quality of education in schools in geographies and educational domains of their choice. The grants could be for developing a core team in education, helping the core team gain on-the-ground experience to work with children, teachers, schools, and the education system, and for developing sound, practical and scalable solutions in their geographies of work
• Opportunities for Capacity Building – To support our partners’ need for their continuous learning, we try to actively facilitate formal and informal opportunities for capacity building through diverse modes such as short courses, workshops, communities of practice, etc. on a wide range of educational and organizational topics. These opportunities are open to all partners, irrespective of the financial support provided
• Mentoring Support – Since some of our early-stage partners might need sustained support on educational and operational aspects of their intervention, we also facilitate mentoring support through established resource organizations or resource persons with significant experience in the education domain
• Our Partner Network – Our partner network is the outcome of a conscious effort to build a civil society ecosystem in school education. This network offers several peer-learning opportunities and partner initiated collaborative forums across organizations and individuals working in diverse geographies and contexts, with experience and expertise in a wide range of educational issues and domains. This network is an integral part of our partnership.