Sitting in Helsinki City Hall with representatives of 100 global education innovations, I knew it was an honor for our work in EduFinance to be recognized in the hundrED Global Collection 2025. This was our first opportunity to receive this recognition and attend the Innovations Summit. However, I still wasn’t certain why hundrED began this recognition process, until a co-founder explained.

In 2017, hundrED’s founders were immersed in the global education sector narrative that ‘the education system is broken and nothing is working.’ While they agreed with the many challenges facing education systems, they didn’t believe the most constructive way forward was to continue elevating only what was broken. With this inspiration, hundrED was launched to recognize the many impactful and scalable education innovations being tested and refined globally by organizations doing the hard work of believing they can bring a positive change to education.

I immediately loved this origin story and that our EduFinance model has been recognized by this positive initiative. 

The broad theme of Innovation Summit this year was ‘Futures in the Making.’ The multi-day sessions started with the Global Collection 2025 Awards Ceremony, which lived up to hundrED’s original objective of creating a space for celebration and inspiration through powerful storytelling and sharing of collective impact.

I found myself rapidly scratching down phrases from speakers in my notebook like “pushing boundaries”, “innovations swim against the tide in challenging circumstances,” and “rediscovering ancient knowledge can be innovative.”

 

‘Education for Human Flourishing?’…

The theme of day two focused on ‘Education for Human Flourishing’ which was not a topic I had recently considered. At first glance I found it daunting at best. In Opportunity EduFinance’s work we are so often focused on supporting schools working in under-resources communities on the basics – can children physically get to the school? Is school a safe environment? Are trained teachers in the classroom and do they have any teaching and learning materials? Can girls go to the toilet in privacy?

And yet I quickly flipped open my notebook realizing the opportunity to reflect on the potential of human flourishing – the potential of the children we work to support to truly flourish – was inspiring.

We were reminded that “well-being is the pre-requisite for learning” as the Development Service Director for Helsinki Education Division overviewed their new education framework incorporating future competencies like ‘future thinking’ and ‘anticipation’ alongside social and emotional learning and key skills development.

The key to education is identifying ourselves in what we are learning.” - Damilola Okonkwo, founder of KEY Academy in Lagos, Nigeria

Yes! Damilola is exactly right! I reflected on all the hard work our EduQuality team has put into localizing and adapting our professional development content to the local contexts we work in. This statement is true for school leaders and teachers as much as it is true for children. We know the power that training on pedagogical and school management best practices can have when educators see themselves and their context reflected back in the content.

The day ended with a surprisingly challenging panel on ‘Supporting Implementation at Scale’ which led to a healthy debate on scaling frameworks and their assumptions. (This was also a great reminder that a panel with a constructive debate is often more memorable than a consensus.)

Romana Shaikh, founder of Kizazi, challenged innovators to first consider the underlying assumptions of any given scaling tool, as many frameworks come from the business world and are built on a profit model that requires standardization for lower cost and replicability. The model is not inherently bad, but important to consider as innovators decide whether and how to scale. She highlighted that scale does not implicitly equal ‘system impact.’

Larry Cooley, founder of Management System International (MSI) and senior fellow at Brookings, agreed that education system changes are perennial systemic problems – not ‘project’ problems. Then he challenged us with data, and made a call to action for innovators and funders to work to improve scaling outcomes and time horizons.

• Only 5% of evidence-based projects in education actually achieve scale.
• For these 5% of projects that do scale, it takes 15 years on average.

This led me to reflect on the journey of Opportunity EduFinance since officially launching in 2012, moving from proof-of-concept to growth phase and finally broadly scaling. This month we are proudly celebrating with our 200 financial institution partners the US$1 billion invested in local education across 32 low- and middle-income countries through education financing. We estimate these investments have supported over 15.5 million children access quality education. Taking a cue from hundrED, we know it is important to create space to celebrate.

And yet, I can’t help but look towards the yet-to-be met US$36 billion education financing demand; towards the thousands of affordable local schools that could add more seats for children and improve education quality if given the financing to unlock their full potential. In short, there is much more ‘scaling’ to be done to achieve our mission, which we look forward to doing alongside our many peer organizations working towards the same goals.

 

What if…

Day 3 focused on ‘Shaping Tomorrow Together,’ asking what meaningful engagement with young people looks like. And then the Summit actually created multiple opportunities for young people to speak to their captive audience – which is more than I have seen at any conference!

We were reminded that -

• Young people feel safe and can thrive when they believe educators are looking for their success rather than their failures
• Mentorship creates a huge difference
• Young people are increasingly struggling with mental health challenges and want more focus on overall wellbeing
• Young people are actively thinking about how and whether they can live a sustainable future

Near the end of the session, a panel facilitator led the audience in a simple but powerful exercise that has stuck with me. He asked the audience to make “what if…” statements out loud when considering the future of education.

“What if all children were included in education?”

“What if learner mental health was really a priority?”

“What if education was fully funded globally?”

While I didn’t speak during the exercise, that question followed me home, leading me to new questions.

“What if we approached state and non-state education as an inclusive system for all learners?”

“What if funders created more space for innovations to move towards scale while building evidence of impact?”

“What if more girls and more boys could complete secondary education or meaningful skills training?”

In hindsight, I think “What if…” is the actual topic of the hundrED Innovations Summit this year, and a question I would hand forward to my peers in the sector as a powerful and inspiring call to action. For everyone working with schools, whether in classrooms, on curriculum design or providing education finance: What are the “What ifs...” that you hope for the future of education? And how can we all work together to make those futures a reality and lead more children to flourish with a quality education?

 

Read our recent report on the Global Education Finance Conference 2024.