Education Cannot Wait (ECW) 3582 views

ECW was established during the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 by international humanitarian and development aid actors, along with public and private donors, to help reposition education as a priority on the humanitarian agenda, usher in a more collaborative approach among actors on the ground and foster additional funding to ensure that every crisis-affected child and young person is in school and learning.

Based on the recognition that continuous access to quality learning is a priority for children and families affected by conflicts, natural disasters and displacement and that no organisation can do it alone, ECW comes as a ground-breaking initiative bringing together public and private partners eager to work together differently and mobilise the funding required to deploy immediate and sustainable programmes tailor-made to the educational needs of these children.

ECW’s mandate is articulated around five core functions:

1. Inspire political commitment so that education is viewed by both governments and funders as a top priority during crises.
2. Generate additional funding to help close the $8.5 billion funding gap needed to reach 75 million children and youth.
3. Plan and respond collaboratively, with a particular emphasis on supporting programmes that enable humanitarian and development actors to work together on shared objectives.
4. Strengthen capacity to respond to crises, nationally and globally, including the ability to coordinate emergency support.
5. Improve accountability by developing and sharing knowledge, including collection of more robust data in order to make better-informed investment decisions, and knowledge of what works and does not.

ECW is a first-of-its kind fund that offers governments, multilateral institutions and the private sector the chance to finance comprehensive education programmes for children and youth affected by conflicts, natural disasters and displacement, right from the onset of crisis through recovery phases.

ECW’s First Emergency Response investment window supports education programmes immediately in sudden-onset or escalating crises. The fund’s Multi-Year Resilience investment window addresses longer-term needs through multi-year joint programmes in protracted crises, enabling humanitarian and development actors to work together on delivering collective education outcomes in five priority areas:

• Access: Ensure that crisis-affected children are provided with continuous quality learning
• Equity and Gender Equality: Leave no one behind and ensure access is provided to the most vulnerable children, including girls and children with disabilities
• Continuity: Ensure children stay in school until they complete their education
• Protection: Make sure that schools and learning centres offer a safe, protective and healing environment to crisis-affected children
• Quality: Improve learning outcomes by focusing on curriculum, teachers’ capacities and learning materials

By providing seed funding to develop and implement such programmes through selected partners, ECW aims to catalyse broader investments from global and in-country donors in education in emergencies. ECW’s third window of investment, the Acceleration Facility, supports research and data collection, advancing best practices and promoting innovation, learning outcomes and gender-targeted interventions in education in emergencies.

Additional information on ECW’s mandate, investments modalities and strategic objectives and results framework is available in our ECW Strategic Plan 2018-2021.