The ECW Strategic Plan
ECW’s second Strategic Plan covers the period 2023-2026. The plan describes how ECW will build on its proven model, while catalyzing new solutions in response to the growing needs in the sector. The plan embodies the 'New Way of Working' – facilitating strengthened collaboration of a wide range of stakeholders to achieve collective education outcomes.
The plan sets out ECW’s ambitious results for children and adolescents, and articulates the strategic objectives, programmatic priorities and MEL approach to deliver on that ambition. It also provides an overview of ECW’s core functions and investment windows, and the accompanying Theory of Change and Results Framework.
ECW Strategic Plan
ECW’s Strategic Plan was endorsed in September 2022, covering the period 2023-2026.
Our work is anchored in two strategic objectives to address the most critical and persistent challenges to closing the quality education gap:
Increased and better funding for EiEPC
Stronger EiEPC capacities and systems
ECW’s Strategic Plan 2023–2026 Achieving Results: A New Way of Working
At the heart of ECW’s strategy are ambitious ‘Results for Children’: that children and adolescents affected by crisis are able to access safe and inclusive quality education and achieve holistic learning outcomes.
The strategy builds on ECW’s global added value, with five important new priorities:
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Prioritizing holistic learning outcomes: We are committed to redoubling our efforts to ensure that crisis-affected children receive education that enables them to acquire holistic learning outcomes and improves their wellbeing.
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Transforming global financing data: We are working with partners to establish a new Financing Observatory to provide timely, transparent, harmonised and high-quality data on EiEPC financing.
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Responding to climate change: The climate emergency is the defining crisis of our time. We are committed to ensuring that our response to the climate crisis cuts across all of our work, from global advocacy to climate-responsive and climate-smart programming.
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Placing localization and community participation at the core of our work: We are committed to the Grand Bargain and to advancing meaningful local leadership, influence and engagement in EiEPC responses.
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Advancing our commitments to gender equality, disability inclusion and to addressing forced displacement: Our commitment to reach those left behind remains a core principle of our work. In order to deliver, we are more ambitious in this new Strategic Plan; for example, moving from gender responsive to gender transformative approaches.
To Deliver Our Strategy, We:
- Leverage partnerships to achieve impact – To reach its goal, ECW brings together a wide range of actors – from the humanitarian and development sectors, governments, donors, and private and philanthropic sectors – to collaborate over multiple years and based on their comparative advantage towards achieving collective education outcomes. This new way of working is at the heart of ECW’s added value.
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Reach those left behind with speed and efficiency while bridging the humanitarian-development nexus – ECW cuts through red tape to deliver faster and better results in complex crisis situations. When emergencies occur, we work directly with humanitarian actors on the ground to rapidly restore education continuity. In protracted crises, ECW multi-year funding offers the predictability required for humanitarian and development actors to jointly develop and implement a strategic multi-year programme, aligned to existing government strategies, humanitarian and refugee response plans.
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Act as a global advocate and convener for the educational needs of children and adolescents in crisis – As a leading voice for children in forgotten crisis settings, we refuse to allow the education sector to remain underprioritized and underfinanced. We champion the importance of multi-year, predicable financing through our own investments while building the capacity of the entire sector to more accurately track, and holistically respond to, children in need.
222 Million Dreams✨📚: A Case for Investment 2023-2026
In 5 years, ECW’s investments have reached a total of 7 million children and youth in some of the most challenging crisis settings, and an additional 31.2 million in our COVID-19 interventions. There is still much to do done, however, with 222 million crisis-affected girls and boys around the world in urgent need of educational support today. Their education cannot wait. ECW’s investment modalities deliver rapidly at scale, while also ensuring depth in quality and sustainability. Investing in education means investing in humanity. Investing in those left furthest behind is a manifestation of profound humanity in response to absolute inhumanity. Join us today!
