We face a generational crisis in education in Latin America following the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, students in the region suffered an estimated loss of 1.5 years of learning, according to the World Bank. As a result, approximately four in five sixth graders in the region may not be able to adequately understand and interpret a text of moderate length. 

We attended Latimpacto’s second annual gathering to participate in a discussion on the region’s need for investment in education. Global School Leaders strengthens education systems across Latin America, Asia and Africa by supporting school leaders to improve the quality of instruction in their schools.  

Given our growing partnerships on empowering school leaders in the region (Centro Lemann in Brazil, Viva Valores in Peru, and ConnectEd in Guatemala) and the global network of school leaders we are running with Varkey Foundation in Argentina, we were keen to dive deeper into regional approaches to addressing the growing education challenges. 

Three themes stood out for us from the conference:

Intersectionality of developmental issues

Unlike the education-focused conferences that we usually attend, the Latimpacto conference addressed the need for holistic solutions that look at the intersectionality of challenges in people’s lives. Being able to hear about climate change, livelihoods, health, and education in one space made it clear that solutions we seek to implement must address the way these issues intersect in people’s lives, e.g., climate change causes flooding, which brings disease and shuts down schools. 

This exposure is pushing us to think about how to engage with organisations that work outside of education. We had initial exposure to this work during the COVID pandemic when we created partnerships with mental health-focused organisations to offer school leaders and teachers the opportunity to process their own stress and challenges. We are exploring partnerships with financial institutions to look at ways in which they can support leaders of low-fee private schools with appropriate financing mechanisms.

Focus on impact investing

Impact investing seemed to be the buzzword, and the conference featured a lot of discussion about impact investing. Many foundations were shifting their strategies to being more impact investors and many impact-oriented companies were seeking funding. While recognizing that the world of philanthropy itself is moving toward more blended finance approaches, we worry whether purely philanthropic efforts will get crowded out of the space. 

In many instances, the challenges organisations are tackling can be seen as a result of market failures and hence would not be good candidates for double- or triple-bottom-line approaches. For example, we invest in impact analysis at the student level – if students are performing better because of school leader intervention, they would, in the longer term, be on a better life path. This evidence-building is time-intensive, and the returns (at the student level and for the students) are many years in the future – a time frame and return outside the current purview of impact investing.

Connecting across the region and around the world

The conference attracted broad attendance from across the region and saw the presence of global organizations like UNICEF and UNHCR and those from other regions like the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), the Africa Venture Philanthropy Association, and the Europe Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA). This diverse group of attendees created an exciting conversation that spanned the region and connected to global movements. From our work in nine countries across three continents, we see the value of organisations learning from each other’s perspectives and interventions, and it was good to see this reflected in the larger conference.  

Interestingly, most of the initiatives represented were single-country-focused. Regional conversations such as these are even more critical to ensure that programmatic initiatives are informed by best practices globally and that we see cross-pollination of ideas between organisations working in different contexts.

We left Rio full of hope. Many organisations were interested in collaborating and collectively addressing the complex challenges the region faces. The discussions at Latimpacto were full of positivity and gave us a glimpse into a future of empowered leaders across Latin America leading change in their communities.

(L to R): Azad Oommen (Global School Leaders); Anna Penido (Centro Lemann, Brazil); Camila Pereira (Fundacao Lemann, Brazil); Animesh Priya (Global School Leaders).

Azad Oommen is the CEO and Animesh Priya the Director of Partnerships at Global School Leaders. They can be reached at azad@globalschoolleaders.org and animesh@globalschoolleaders.org respectively.