Education nonprofit to expand focus to climate and green jobs

EDC, a global education NGO, has launched a new strategy, name, and logo as it seeks to work more on cross-cutting actions across education, climate change, health, and workforce development to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world. The America-based nonprofit was founded in 1958 by a group of physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who were concerned about the way science was being taught in United States schools. This led to the development of a pioneering inquiry-based approach to teaching science in schools, which was translated to countries in Africa through the African Primary Science Program in the 1960s. Since then, the organization, whose revenue totaled $200.7 million in 2023 and was formerly known as the Education Development Center, has grown to work on education, nutrition, and skills projects across 80 countries, including foundational literacy, suicide prevention, and HIV prevention. Last year, EDC also absorbed the Education Commission, author of the influential 2016 Learning Generation report on the need to increase financing for education which led to the creation of the International Finance Facility for Education. The commission’s former head, Liesbet Steer, became EDC’s new CEO but stepped down in May. Now, the NGO, which has a staff of around 1,400, half of which work on international programs and half on the U.S., is changing again to meet “today’s interconnected challenges which need interconnected solutions,” Siobhan Murphy, EDC’s interim president and CEO, told Devex. Describing the new strategic vision, launched today, she said: “The impetus for the new strategy is a combination of our evolution as an organization and frankly a response to what’s going on in the world.” Four goals make up the heart of the strategy: Ensuring children have access to quality education and care; equipping people with the ‘green skills’ and resilience to prosper in a rapidly changing world; helping teachers and education systems meet the evolving needs of learners; and fostering well-being through safe environments and quality health care, especially around mental health. Building on its work in basic education, one of the nonprofit’s spotlight initiatives includes developing a global primary grade science program to investigate, understand, and respond to climate change, as well as ‘green skilling’ the future workforce. “In basic education, foundational skills are critically important and we’re excited about introducing science into the conversation because of the importance of developing critical thinking skills and scientific methods, especially now given climate change and giving people the necessary ingredients to understand and act on what’s happening,” Nancy Devine, director of EDC’s international development division, told Devex. “We are also working in youth and workforce development with a particular focus on ‘greening’ our programs and also ‘future proof skills,’ so that people aren’t pigeon-holed into a particular vocation but can transfer those skills into the ever-changing world of work,” Devine added. Under the new plan, EDC will make its “commitment to partnerships and equity much more visible,” according to Murphy. “We’ve always done a lot of work on people with disabilities and girls and women but we want to call it out more explicitly,” she said. Meanwhile, “partnerships are such through lines to the work we do,” Murphy said, before going on to add: “It’s always been there but we want to make that much more visible.” EDC also plans to focus more on impact as part of the new strategy. “What we’re trying to move into is how will we know and understand above a project level whether we are advancing these Sustainable Development Goals,” Murphy explained. That involves looking at the data the organization is collecting and figuring out what else is needed to see whether “we’ve contributed to moving the needle here,’” she said. The revamp includes a simplified name and a new logo that recalls the NGO’s famous ‘pattern blocks,’ a mathematics education tool launched in 1963 that is still used in elementary schools around the world today. Update, May 13, 2024: This article and headline have been updated to clarify that EDC is an America-based global education NGO.