The Luminos Fund

I am applying for The Elevate Prize because the world has the urgent opportunity to ensure no child is ever denied the chance to learn. Your mission to amplify impact leaders’ work for social good and drive change together inspires me. I believe I can achieve and inspire stronger outcomes for millions of children if I am part of the incredible Elevate community.  

I launched Luminos and our catch-up education programs in 2016 as an ambitious catalyst in the movement to help all children receive a basic education. Today, Luminos has taught over 152,000 out-of-school children to read, write, and do math and is illuminating a path for educating the world’s most vulnerable children. We’re supporting communities and governments to reimagine what is possible for children.  

We have a powerful story to tell and, with Elevate’s support, can expand our platform and ignite a bigger movement around the cause of out-of-school children. We will leverage your esteemed network’s resources and skills, and connect with like-minded leaders to co-create, share, and inspire others on this mission. The Prize will also unlock our ability to create a world-class multimedia toolkit on our program to help others borrow and scale our model.

Raising my daughter in Africa, I was acutely aware each day I dropped her in her idyllic Montessori private school that she had the gift of a loving welcome into the world of learning that few around her could claim.  

Children everywhere learn best when they're happy. Any parent knows this to be true. And yet, too often when we turn our minds to the challenge of making quality education a reality for the millions of children denied even the basics, our concept of what’s possible narrows. We revert to dry models of scripted instruction on the assumption that poor communities cannot engage in rich learning. I knew in my heart this thinking was backwards. 

If ‘five senses’ learning, using local traditions and the gift of the great outdoors isn’t possible in rural Africa, then where is it possible? Together with colleagues in rural Ethiopia and a global team of education researchers, I embarked on a process to use everything the world knows from early learning science, and reimagine those principles in simple rural classrooms, led by young teachers empowered to deliver rich, joyful education, in some of the poorest corners of the globe.

Even before COVID-19, low-income countries faced a learning crisis, with 258 million children out of school globally. Millions more were unable to read or write by the age of 10: a crisis the World Bank calls learning poverty. Now, 24 million additional children may drop out in COVID-19’s aftermath.  

I launched Luminos because every child deserves a rich education. Luminos is a 501(c)(3) non-profit registered in the United States. We deliver transformative learning outcomes for the hardest-to-reach children, train promising young adults as teachers, and unlock the light of learning within the communities we serve. We partner with governments to adopt our model into national education systems. Over 90% of our graduates continue their educations after our program and they are happier, more confident, and have higher aspirations than their peers. 

Ending learning poverty, particularly in the poorest corners of the world, is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. And, in places like Ethiopia and Liberia, out-of-school children often come from the poorest families, most likely to have been displaced, and found in distinct geographies. Without innovative catch-up programs like Luminos, there's no practical way for these children to get back on the path of learning.

I refuse to accept the frame that rich, five-senses learning isn’t possible in low-resource and low-income settings, and I’m devoted to ensuring that even the world’s most vulnerable children can learn with joy, respect, and caring.  

The Luminos program is revolutionizing how the world approaches education in low-resourced communities. Our award-winning model helps out-of-school children catch up on missed learning and thrive as life-long intrinsic learners. Our students are proof that even the most vulnerable children can become independent, collaborative, and resilient learners who master the basics through activity-based, child-centric approaches. Pedagogy that caters to children’s needs should no longer be reserved for children whose families have means. We must democratize access to and enjoyment of rich learning. 

Our program is innovative because we’re reaching the children the world largely assumes to be uneducable, and children at the greatest risk of succumbing to learning poverty, with joyful learning environments. We’re one of the few education innovations with a proven model, laser focus, and compelling track record for helping the most vulnerable children learn and catch up to grade level. And, we’re creating a legacy of sustained, transformative impact at levels—mobilizing communities, governments, and the global community around our vision.

Education is an essential gateway to human flourishing, with myriad proven benefits from better health outcomes to reduced child marriage to higher civic engagement. Tragically, millions of children are denied the joy of an education. I’m working to change this. Our program is a beacon for education innovations, on how to catalyze mobilization, at all levels, around ending learning poverty.  

At the community level, we’re amplifying local talent and wisdom by hiring and training local young adults as teachers. And, through parent engagement groups, we are helping parents better understand the value of education.  

At the national level, we are partnering with governments to bring children back on the path to opportunity and supporting research to better understand the out-of-school challenge.   

On a global level, we are raising awareness by sharing powerful stories of education’s transformative impact. Stories like Anteneh’s (pictured)– an 11-year-old in Ethiopia who had previously been kept out of school to help support his family as a goat herder. Today, in a Luminos classroom, Anteneh learns the critical building blocks for education: reading, writing, and math. Building on what he learned counting his goats, Anteneh says, “Math is my favorite subject because I like numbers.”