This U.N.-Created Fund Is Moving $1 Billion and Counting for Education During Times of Crisis
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Rohingya refugee children attend class in Bangladesh. NAUFAL ZAQUAN/shutterstock
Educating children in crisis situations was an acute enough problem before COVID that the U.N. dedicated its first global breakout fund to finding solutions. Five years on, a global pandemic — and protracted conflicts that have produced 100 million refugees and counting — has exacerbated the crisis, while limiting humanity’s capacity to respond.
The fund, Education Cannot Wait, or ECW, was established by the U.N. following the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit led by former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and became fully operational in 2017. The goal was simple: to provide all crisis-affected children and youth with the “safe, free and quality” education promised by Sustainable Development Goal 4. But marshaling resources was far from meeting the need. Education typically draws only around 2% of all humanitarian funding.
Meanwhile, the number of children missing out on learning has ballooned. Upon its formation, ECW identified 75 million children who were falling through the cracks. Now, between compounding circumstances like COVID and a new methodology that leverages the latest, most granular crisis severity data, estimates have grown to 222 million.
IP recently connected with the organization’s first and present director, Yasmin Sherif, to learn how ECW raised and mobilized $1 billion in its first five years, and its future plans to keep the world from leaving an entire generation behind.
Institutional knowledge
A human rights and international humanitarian lawyer by training, Sherif has more than 30 years with the United Nations and international NGOs under her belt. That work took her to some of the most crisis-affected areas on the planet, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sudan.
Sherif said her time at the U.N. has taught her the critical nature of education as a human right, and its bedrock role in achieving all other goals. From alleviating poverty to boosting women’s rights and health standards, she believes that “none happen with an uneducated population.”
She also watched educational perspectives during crises undergo a critical shift, from the traditional view that interventions “can wait until conflict is over” to one that recognizes that the average conflict now carries on for 17 years, spurring new urgency. Sherif strongly feels that the time to act is now, particularly on behalf of refugees, whose access to education provides the “only hope left” to rise out of untenable situations.
An operational hybrid
Education Cannot Wait is a hybrid. It works independently, but in close partnership with governments, public and private donors, U.N. agencies, civil society groups, and other humanitarian and development aid actors. The idea is to increase efficiencies and break down silos to create a unified delivery of quality education to children living in the world’s toughest contexts. At the same time, it’s hosted by UNICEF and administered under its financial, human resources and administrative umbrella.
Where others may see the complicated structure as daunting, Sherif says her years at the U.N. have helped her guide her team of 30 in ways that cut through red tape. “We know the system and where to shred blockage.”
Instead, she said ECW has taken on an entrepreneurial spirit grounded in a real sense of urgency. “Winning the human race is a race against time.” Part of that stems from a governance structure that gives all donors a seat at the table — and creates a board that’s involved in both setting goals and driving results. The head of the Dutch Postcode Lottery serves on its executive board, for example, along with representatives from USAID and Theirworld, which represents the civil society sector.
There’s also a high degree of accountability in the way it funds. Sherif said ECW typically gets UNICEF and other agencies together to develop one program standard for each initiative, then invests seed funds. “If they deliver, we deliver more,” she said, creating a constant incentive to take the best approach.
With all the competing and compelling priorities facing the U.N., Sherif said the team has worked hard to move crisis education from the margins to the center, while staying connected to “realities on the ground.”
The push recently paid off. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres made the topic of this year’s U.N. General Assembly summit Transforming Education, mobilizing a united effort to recover from pandemic learning losses and reimagine the educational systems of the future.
Mobilizing the money
ECW has moved $1 billion in its first five years, and plans to raise and deploy another $1.5 billion over the next three years.
Its wide range of donors and stakeholders include governments, multilateral agencies like the World Bank and the European Union, and private funders. Government support comprises the largest donor base, and includes investments totaling more than $364 million from Germany, $159 million from the U.K., and $100 million from the U.S. Of the total $92 million ECW mobilized in 2020, bilateral donors accounted for $64.4 million, followed by private sector donors at $19.7 million, and multilateral supporters at $7.7 million.
Far and away its largest private sector funder is the LEGO Foundation, whose work educating children in crisis situations has resulted in contributions totaling $45 million to date.
Still, overall private sector and foundation support currently sits at less than 6%. Increasing that is a priority for Yasmin Sherif and the ECW team going forward, through levers like the high-level financing conference it’s hosting following the summit to help convert accumulated energy to concrete support.
Currently, Sherif said she has her sights set on private donors, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals that she feels will find common ground in ECW’s “entrepreneurial passion and drive for results.”
Sherif thinks that sitting on the sidelines while 222 million kids are sidelined from learning is not an option. “It is not one of many priorities. It is an uncompromising imperative if we are to change ourselves back to progress for humanity.” Because through education, children are “the ones who can and will change it.”
