Business community pledges $50M for Education Cannot Wait

Today, on behalf of the business community, the Global Business Coalition for Education pledges an additional $50 million of support for education in emergencies.

Delivery of the first $38 million of this pledge is already underway, supporting education for refugee and displaced children, youth, and teachers affected by the war in Ukraine.  At the heart of this pledge are more than 70,000 laptops and learning devices we are actively distributing to local NGOs, international agencies, and teachers alongside the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation and in cooperation with the First Lady of Ukraine.

This work is leveraged through our engagement with Education Cannot Wait’s first emergency response in the region. We would like to thank our partners, HP and Microsoft, for their support of this initiative.

In addition to delivering on this pledge, the Global Business Coalition for Education is launching a new Disaster Relief and Education Response Fund that will provide businesses on-the-ground information and partnerships to raise and distribute funds within 30 days of an emergency in support of education.

The coalition will partner with Education Cannot Wait to channel support from the business community to projects aligned with existing activities and priorities identified by local actors in cooperation with the international community. Our aim will be to make it easy, effective and efficient for companies to make education a priority when addressing humanitarian crises.

This pledge builds on the work already underway and reach at least $50 million in corporate support over the next three-year period of the ECW strategic plan.

The Global Business Coalition for Education is a movement of businesses dedicated to ending the global education crisis and unleashing the potential of the next generation. In 2016, at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, staff from the coalition were part of the launch of Education Cannot Wait and have lived up to our commitment to engage the business community in supporting education in emergencies.