Brink

We’re proud to announce that the Brink Foundation is partnering with the United States Agency For International Development (USAID) to enable better use of implementation research (IR) in global education. This partnership will advance the goals of uBoraBora, an initiative launched in April 2024, which aims to continuously improve foundational literacy and numeracy in Sub-Saharan Africa. USAID’s support, provided through the Foundational Learning: Advancing Implementation Research for Scale (FLAIRS) award to Brink, along with co-investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will play a crucial role in driving this mission forward. The focus of USAID funding will be to tackle the barriers that prevent implementation research evidence and approaches from being used, and find ways for implementation evidence to be more useful and applicable. This will include the creation of an “Evidence Studio” to support this. The uBoraBora team will also work directly with USAID missions and partners to expand the quality and quantity of implementation research happening directly through their foundational literacy and numeracy programmes. We’re excited about the possibilities ahead and can’t wait to see the impact this partnership will make!

EdTech Hub will be in conversation with EIDU, exploring the mechanics of open-source scaling. This discussion will tackle key questions, such as: 👉🏽 How does open sourcing work in practice, and what are the implications for EIDU’s business model? 👉🏽How does the EIDU team balance the promise of global collaboration with the need to adapt to local contexts? 👉🏽What’s at stake if this approach doesn't succeed, and what are the biggest hopes for its success? Don’t miss this deep dive into the future of open-source in EdTech. Join Lea Simpson and Bernd Roggendorf in this insightful conversation. Sign up today: https://ow.ly/W54650THSAa

If you’re passionate about sustainable urban development then its very likely that you'll be at World Urban Forum 12 Egypt next month, where we’ll be joining a roundtable discussing how to accelerate financial and technical support for Africa’s rapidly growing intermediary cities. These cities are the fastest-growing on the continent, and there’s a huge opportunity to intervene at the land-use planning stage to ensure they are climate-resilient. Joining our co-founder Abigail Freeman at the 'Innovation and Action in Intermediary African Cities' roundtable will be the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) and Nesta Challenge Works, who have just completed a collaborative piece of research that explores how to support intermediary cities with effective land use planning. The WUF event will be building on that work to look at how we can collaboratively together to accelerate growth in these cities. If you're interested in attending you can message Abigail.  

Recently EIDU’s founder and CTO, Bernd Roggendorf, told Forbes that open-sourcing their platform was a crucial step because, “it will take a collaborative effort to truly democratize education worldwide.” Could EIDU’s decision to make their proprietary source code freely available and modifiable be a huge step towards making a more equitable future for all? And what are the challenges and complexities that will undoubtedly accompany a move like this? On November 7, Brink co-founder Lea Simpson - in her capacity as Innovation Director for EdTech Hub - is sitting down with Bernd to dig into those questions (register for the webinar here: https://ow.ly/W54650THSAa). They’ll be talking abut how this open-sourcing will work in practice, how EIDU came to the decision in the first place, and what questions and concerns are likely to be keeping Bernd up at night over the next few years. We know that many of you have plenty of experience and opinions around this topic, so if there’s something you’d like to Lea to ask Bernd, please let us know in the comments.

We’re very excited to have another opportunity to run our ‘Innovation Missions Powered by Behavioural Sciences’ course again next month https://lnkd.in/enHFRma7? Earlier this year we took a group of incredible changemakers through this six week course for the first time. Our aim was to create an experience that didn’t just TELL people how they could bring people together to realise a shared vision of a better future; but SHOW them how they could put those ideas into action, based on the specific challenges they were facing. Judging by their responses, that first cohort got a huge amount of it. Starting on November 7 we’ll be sharing all we’ve learned about Innovation Missions with another cohort, profiling the wisdom of the many incredible partners and colleagues we’re so lucky to work with at Brink. 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐨𝐧, 𝐬𝐨 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 25%, 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤: https://lnkd.in/enHFRma7? How do you bring people together around a shared vision of a better future? And just how do you turn those ideas into reality? We’re looking forward to exploring these kinds of questions with you next month. We promise it will be hugely valuable, insightful and fun.

We are live at Netherlands Food Partnership World Food Day with 'Mwenye macho haambiwi tazama’ (One who has eyes is not told where to look), a multisensory exhibition that uncovers the often-overlooked journeys of our food through the informal food economy. If you are here come and say hello, explore the stories, and tell us what you would do to support and legitimise the informal food economy.  If you can't be in Amersfoort, then look out for a digital version of the exhibition, coming to hellobrink.co in the coming weeks. Until then, here's a look at how Brink and Ideas Unplugged Ltd put the exhibition together: 

I have worked in tech for over 20 years and without question, EdTech is the most complex of all the sectors. Scaling EdTech is an immense challenge: the buyer and user are different, you often have to sell to a number of district level decision-makers to embed into government systems, the margins are tiny... especially if you care about reaching children who are more marginalised (opposed to selling to middle-class parents). The list goes on. Recently EIDU announced they were making moves to go open-source. As Innovation Director for EdTech Hub many people asked me what I thought and how it would work? How will they sustain their business? What does it actually mean? Will this unlock scale, faster? So I'm going to ask and answer these questions in conversation with Bernd Roggendorf, EIDU's founder and CTO. Please come along and explore if open-source can crack the code for scaling EdTech.

🌱 𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 80% 𝐨𝐟 𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬? For millions of Kenyans living in cities, affordable and nutritious food isn't a given—its access is made possible by the informal food economy. In Nairobi alone, over 30,000 ‘vibanda’ (food stalls) bring meals to tables, but the vital role these humble vendors play in feeding our nation often goes unnoticed. The informal food economy plays a critical role in addressing broader issues such as battling food price inflation, ensuring food security and nutrition. Yet, despite its undeniable impact, the informal food economy is still often overlooked, misunderstood, and underappreciated. 🍲 This World Food Day on the 16th of October, hosted by the Netherlands Food Partnership in Amersfoort, we’ll be contributing to exploring how we can transform food systems to meet the challenges of a changing world by hosting an exhibition entitled 'Mwenye macho haambiwi tazama' (One who has eyes is not told to see). In a partnership with Ideas Unplugged Ltd, we’ll shine a spotlight on the invisible hands that bring food from rural farms to the bustling streets of Nairobi. We’ll take you behind the scenes—through the stories of those who make a popular dish ugali madondo possible—from the maize and beans grown in rural farms to a nutritious meal at your local kibanda. These powerful stories will be brought to life as photo mosaics, revealing the unseen journeys behind every plate. 👀 There’s a sneak peek at what we’ve been capturing below! Be part of the conversation. Register today to attend the conference next week: https://lnkd.in/euRvfCaE P.S. This exhibition builds on previous work we did in partnership with TRANSFORM (Unilever, FCDO & EY) and local Kenyan research partners - Laterite, PROCOL Kenya, Busara, and Ideas Unplugged Ltd. You can read more about that work here: https://lnkd.in/e2TSYDWX

In our work with public servants in governments all around the world we’ve noticed a common pattern: These people who have a unique opportunity to put real people at the heart of their work, often struggle to do so. Most of the time this is because they feel constrained by plans, hierarchies and targets… All the things that provide a comforting illusion of certainty, and which are devilishly hard to break out of. If this resonates, our co-founder Abigail Freeman has written an article for Apolitical that spells out three ways civil servants can begin to step away from illusions and start focusing on the real. Real world. Real people. Real impact. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/ePwcVrtz