Wipro Foundation’s Systemic Education Reform program supports diverse Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to develop their capacities to work towards enabling shifts within the public education system in the country.

We currently support three categories of organizations across the country through organizational grants:

• Early and mid-stage organizations working in the area of school education
• Community-based organizations having a desire to get into school education
• Established organizations not from the education vertical but keen to enter the field of education

Organizations working in school education

For organizations already working in school education, our grants aim to deepen capacities or build additional capacities to take the work to the next level. This could mean any of the following:

• Building capabilities in specific areas of focus within education by working on the ground (within classrooms in government schools and/or community centres) with support from experienced organizations, resources, and people.

• Documenting and consolidating the work done so far into approaches and models of engagement with the public education system that can be meaningfully scaled, and shared for learning in other contexts.

• Building educational capacities to effectively support other grassroots organizations or stakeholders like government school teachers in delivering quality educational interventions

Community Organizations

We provide small grants to established organizations with a strong community presence, working on one or more aspects of community development and empowerment, and having a desire to work in school education, specifically to strengthen  the public education system in their areas of operation. The grants support organizations to:

• Establish a dedicated education team of 2-4 people. Develop their capacity to work in school education, particularly the public education system, through hands-on fieldwork and specific capacity building opportunities

It would be good to either have some team members with existing teaching experience or for the organization to have had some experience in the school education space, including, but not limited to teaching-learning aspects.

Established Organizations not in the education sector

For organizations with expertise and track record in other areas of social activities such as health, environment, livelihood, human rights, governance, etc. or knowledge domains such as natural and human/social sciences, we provide grants to enable these organizations to bring their expertise and learning into the area of school education. The grants would be to do the following:

• Establish a core team to work in the area of school education. An ideal team would include people from an education background as well as domain experts.

• Develop understanding and experience of working in school education. This experience will then help the organization understand the unique challenges and devise appropriate strategies for a deeper engagement to improve school education by incorporating relevant aspects of domain knowledge and capabilities

• Enable the organizations to work with other educational organizations on specific domain areas to bolster their understanding of the work.

Within each category of organization, the support is aimed at helping them build deeper capacities to work in school education. We support organizations through:

• Financial Grants – Our financial support is aimed at enabling organizations to work in a focused manner to improve the quality of education in schools in geographies and educational domains of their choice. The grants could be for developing a core team in education, helping the core team gain on-the-ground experience to work with children, teachers, schools, and the education system, and for developing sound, practical and scalable solutions in their geographies of work.
• Opportunities for Capacity Building – To support our partners’ need for continuous learning, we try to actively facilitate opportunities for capacity building through diverse modes such as short courses, workshops, communities of practice, etc. on a wide range of educational and organizational topics. These opportunities are open to all partners, irrespective of the financial support provided.
• Mentoring Support – Since some of our early-stage partners might need sustained support on educational and operational aspects of their intervention, we also facilitate mentoring support through established resource organizations or resource persons with significant experience in the education domain.
• Our Partner Network – Our partner network is the outcome of a conscious effort to build a civil society ecosystem in school education. This network offers several peer-learning opportunities and partner initiated collaborative forums across organizations and individuals working in diverse geographies and contexts, with experience and expertise in a wide range of educational issues and domains. This network is an integral part of our partnership.