“Changemakers for Education” Programme to reduce Education Inequality

Changemakers for Education is an initiative by ChangemakerXchange, an international non-profit organisation with a mission to provide inclusive, supportive and collaborative spaces for changemakers, social innovators and activists from across the world. The initiative is supported by Julius Bär Foundation.

They welcome applications from changemakers from a variety of backgrounds working to address the education inequality, including social entrepreneurs and innovators, social change agents and activists, and civil society leaders. They intentionally recruit a diverse variety of changemakers because the education crisis requires an intersectional and coordinated approach between numerous stakeholders that are both tackling the root causes, and those who are responding to immediate pressing issues that result from these, which affect society in a variety of negative ways.

What you can expect as a participant and member of ChangemakerXchange?

• Support
  • Participants receive customised, needs-based support to build their capacity via an online capacity building programme, which consists of simple but dynamic virtual formats led by experts and leaders with lived experience.
• In-Person Summit
  • An immersive 5-day, in-person summit awaits all participants from 12th to 18th of August 2024. Held in a breathtaking nature-based location, this unique gathering is designed to forge deep connections, foster well-being, and sow the seeds for meaningful collaboration.
• Collaboration Funding
  • They also provide small seed grants to support cross-border co-creation or co-learning initiatives, which can help reduce education inequality across the region, using an approach of `participatory budgeting’.
• Collaboration Funding
  • They also provide small seed grants to support cross-border co-creation or co-learning initiatives, which can help reduce education inequality across the region, using an approach of ‘participatory budgeting’.
• Ecosystem Building and Networking
  • Beyond supporting the participants’ respective initiatives and fostering collaboration among the changemakers, they also aim to connect them to a wider ecosystem of partners, experts, supporters, events, gatherings and collaborators, within and beyond ChangemakerXchange’s, as well as Julius Baer Foundation’s networks.
• Community
  • Participants not only get the opportunity to connect with and learn from other changemakers working across different dimensions of education across Asia, but will also be invited to join the global ChangemakerXchange community, which includes life-long access to resources and regular opportunities to connect, learn & co-create with social innovators across the world.

Eligible Initiatives

Whilst not limited to the approaches below, they’d love to share a few examples of eligible projects and approaches, which could include working on:

• Bridging the digital divide between privileged children and youth and those that are underserved.
• Leveraging funding for underfunded schools.
• Providing access to literacy resources & tutors.
• Creating dynamic extra-curricular activities, with disadvantaged children in mind.
• Supporting teachers in under-resourced schools.
• Connecting children to high-quality free resources.
• Supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in formal and informal education.
• Supporting parents from disadvantaged backgrounds and building strong teacher-parent partnerships.
• Providing access to education in areas where physical schools are not available.
• Policy change in order to increase education equality.
• Awareness raising and shifting mindsets to draw attention to the challenge and potential solutions

Who covers the cost of participation in the summit and programme?

• Participants are asked to cover their own transportation costs from where they live to the country/location of the summit. However, ChangemakerXchange will cover ALL OTHER COSTS associated with the summit and programme, such as: accommodation, catering, local transportation, room hire, equipment & material, COVID-19 rapid tests, FFP2 masks, facilitation & hosting compensation, programme manager compensation, carbon emissions offsetting derived from the local hosting, post-summit capacity-building programme and post-summit community engagement activities.

Criteria

• Country: You must come from or currently living/having impact in a country in South Asia (which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) and/or South-East Asia (which includes Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore). The programme has a particular focus on (but not limited to) individuals and projects from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
• Age: For this programme you must be aged 18–35. Due to permission reasons, they focus on over 18s. (Please note that changemakers of all ages are welcome to join other activities like Train the Trainer programmes, the Changemaker for Democracy programme or activities of the Possibilists.)
• Role: You are the founder/co-founder, leader/co-leader, manager/co-manager (or hold an influential position with decision-making power, e.g. intrapreneur) of a social/environmental venture/organisation which is up and running and addresses education inequality. They acknowledge though that positive social change is not a ‘hero fight’, hence they’re also explicitly open to people who have been nominated or ‘put forward’ by their collective or team in order to represent them and their initiative/s.
• Complete application: The application form must be fully completed. Only applications submitted before the deadline can be accepted.
• Language: Whilst the selection of ideas will be based on the validity of great ideas rather than high proficiency of English, the programme will be hosted in English, meaning a good level of understanding and ability to express oneself in English is required to participate in the programme.

For more information, visit ChangemakerXchange.