Project Selection is Complicated – Especially During a Pandemic

It’s tough to select, plan and implement education projects during a global pandemic when schools are closed and young people are supposed to be learning from home.

To address this new environment, we’ve made a few changes to how we will choose projects for next year. In the meantime, we are in close contact with current partners as they deal with school closures, remote learning, social distancing and the particular issues facing communities in developing countries.

In this blog we’ll discuss some changes to our project selection process.

What is our mission?

Every year, 60 million girls awards grants of $100,000 CAD to two or three Canadian charities whose projects align with our mission and objectives. We fund education projects for children in developing countries, focusing on the most marginalized – girls, children living in poverty, in rural areas or places affected by conflict, and children living with a handicap. Girls must comprise at least half of all children in the projects we fund.

In a typical year, we put out a call for proposals in late August, evaluate project submissions in the autumn, and announce our final selections in January. Following a year of fundraising we disburse grants in December – a year and a half after the initial project submission.

Clearly, this time frame was not going to fly in 2020. ­With schools closed and the learning environment going through immense changes, how could our partners plan and design an education project that would not be funded for almost two years?

Photo credit: Josiane Farand

Being flexible led to changes in selection process

Early this summer, we sent out letters advising our partners that we would delay the call for proposals until the new year so that they would have more time to plan and assess the ever-evolving situation. We also decided to accelerate the evaluation process so that we could still select projects and disburse funds by the end of the year.

Success will depend a lot on you – our supporters! We hope that you will continue to give to 60 million girls, even before you know what types of projects we’ll be funding next year.

As always, we look for projects that focus on the quality of education. We want kids to be able to succeed in life and having a quality education is key. We also feel that interventions using technology are the way of the future. It’s one of the reasons we developed our Mobile Learning Lab (MLL). We hope that the newfound problem-solving and creativity we see will carry forward to the future so that we can find ways to ensure that all children can go to school and learn.

Thank you so much to all of our supporters and partners. Our work would not be possible without you!

Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on girls’ education issues.