EduSpots

EduSpots has a holistic technological solution that addresses inequity in education stretching across quality, access, digital connectivity and skills, gender-based challenges and the impact of climate change, aiming to enable learners and Catalysts to overcome barriers to thrive in a rapidly changing global and local environment. 

Getrude, a young Catalyst now staff EcoSTEM coordinator from Bolgatanga, shared that her ‘education ran out when the chalk ran out’, with her homework completed through the light of a torch shared by her family. In rural areas of Ghana, access to pre-primary education is just 38%, compared to 90% for urban areas; 65% of children in rural Ghana do not complete primary education (UNESCO, 2020). 1,215,546 children were out of school in Ghana per the 2021 Population and Housing Census. Even if children can attend school, communities we work with usually have no books aside from a few core textbooks.

Access to quality education and safe learning spaces is a global challenge, especially in relation to girls’ education, with 118.5 million girls were out of school worldwide in 2021 (Global Education Monitoring Report, 2022). In Ghana, 1 in 5 girls 20-24 years are married before 18 (UNICEF) with 26% of girls reporting sexual violence (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019). 220,000 females 15-24 yrs are illiterate (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019) and 2765 girls in 10 Northern districts did not return to school after Covid closures (The Graphic, 2021). 

We also address the challenge of digital inequity, realizing its consequences for well-being, employability, connectivity and health. In Ghana, digital access is limited in rural areas, where internet uptake rates are at 54% compared to 80% in urban areas (World Bank). A 2023 study we conducted suggested that 50% of learners at the Spots had no access to a digital device, and were learning ICT on a blackboard. Aduko, an EduLit club member, commented: “If students have the opportunity to use these kinds of devices in our Spot, learning will be much easier and more fun and many students will be dropping to the library.” Ghana is currently experiencing frequent periods of light-out, which make our solar-powered spaces the only centers with electricity in some communities. 

Finally,  our Catalysts recognise our rapidly changing world and the increasing impact of climate change, through rising sea levels, drought, increased temperatures and erratic rainfall. One-quarter of the population lives along the coast, and are especially vulnerable to flooding and waterborne disease (USAID). In 2023, 80% of teachers in our network felt that their students had limited or no understanding of climate change and its causes.

EduSpots supports community members in creating and sustaining their own tech-supported inclusive local education spaces named ‘Spots’. Since 2015, we have together created 50 spaces led by an accompanying grassroots network of over 300 changemakers named ‘Catalysts’ with a range of digital tools used to ensure consistent teamwork and programmes engagement. 

Our holistic, innovative and community-driven solution, centred around achieving the ‘Dream Spot Model’, has 3 core areas: Spot Leadership (focused on Spot sustainability, systems, resources and local fundraising), Keeping Spots Safe (safeguarding and risk management), and Educational Equity (via our 5 education strands, also promoting community-led activities, with a focus on gender and wider equity). 

This model is housed on our EduSpots app, a tool designed to enable communities to come together to create the futures they want to see through education, with Catalysts and learners accessing the app via distributed tablets, supported by wifi kits, projectors and security units. 

 Catalysts learn about, and apply this model via: 

1. Ignite Programme 

• All Catalysts introduced to the model through Spot visits/handbook & sign partnership agreements. Regional Coordinators (who are 75% from Catalyst backgrounds) support them through the process with 1-1 mentorship and coaching. 

• Catalysts register and access WhatsApp feeds (and the EduSpots App via assigned tablets)

• Communities set up Spot Management Committees, recruit Catalysts & find a space. Lean Spot start-up costs and tablets funded.  

• 3-day residential training given across Spot leadership, keeping Spots safe, EcoSTEM, early years literacy, creative JHS literacy and gender equity. 

• Catalysts choose to lead local clubs in EduLit, EcoSTEM, Ignite Equity and EduKidz Clubs, alongside Spot Lead, equipped with resource kits. 

• Catalysts are supported by Strand Coordinators & Peer Mentor and sent monthly challenges, with WhatsApp communities of practice and joining monthly zoom sessions. 

• Catalysts access online Ignite talks alongside our 4 online courses in global development, leadership, postcolonial thinking and social entrepreneurship.

• Catalysts receive a certificate, also receiving recognition awards such as Volunteer of the Month, and other spotlighting designed to share practice and increase motivation. 

2. Catalyse Leadership Programme

• Catalysts complete an individual and Spots needs, assets and aspirations task. 

• 5-day residential training at our Elmina Training Centre in Spot Leadership themes and safeguarding, including digital devices and app training. 

• Catalysts devise Catalyse Projects aiming to drive sustainable change towards the Dream Spot Model, with grant funding and resources  

• Monthly meet-ups with specialist speakers on leadership themes.

3. Peer Mentoring Programme

• Those completing the Catalyse Leadership Programme can apply to be remunerated Peer Mentors (4 hours a week), shadowing a staff member. 

• Peer mentoring small group training workshops & mentoring handbook 

• Attendance of monthly group professional development sessions, alongside grant funding support. 

4. EduSpots staff team

• 60% of the staff team are drawn from the Catalyst network.

• Staff are stretched across multiple regions of Ghana, Nigeria and the UK, with a specifically developed online working system developed using a mix of google suite, Zoom and WhatsApp. 

• The staff team are all enrolled in in-house professional development programmes, with a strong focus on coaching.

In EduSpots, everyone is a Catalyst and a contributor rather than a beneficiary. 

Over 10,000 learners use the 50 education spaces named ‘Spots’ each year to access reading and learning resources including digital resources via our devices and app, technology and solar-powered safe spaces to study. This enables them to have the tools, space and mentorship they need to thrive leading to increased engagement in education, advanced community engagement and leadership skills, and equitable access to digital resources. 

Learners are from typically underserved rural Ghanaian communities (81% aged 4-18 years). Whilst learners can often benefit from passionate teachers and supportive parents, Catalysts indicate that the typical formal rural education experience can involve teacher absenteeism, rote learning, limited access to books and technology and inadequate furniture and school infrastructure. This leads to low literacy levels and poor exam performance. Many students support their families economically; many Catalysts indicate concerns there is a strong correlation between poverty and sexual abuse for teenage girls. 

Over 2000 of these learners participate in community-led EduSpots clubs (EduLit, EduKidz, EcoSTEM and Ignite Equity).These are designed to enable them to gain practical skills in creativity and critical thinking, alongside foundational skills in literacy, numeracy and empathy and gender equity clubs challenging stereotypes and advancing locally driven conversations and collaborative action on overcoming gender-specific and wider challenges. These skills enable them to advance their exam performance and wider life opportunities, ultimately empowering them to create the futures that they want to see for themselves and their communities. 

We work with over 300 local volunteers named ‘Catalysts’. They are teachers, students and community members who are ready to be the change in their communities but may typically lack the finances and employment opportunities to achieve their dreams. 76% of our volunteers are under 25, and 96% are under 35, with older members of the community supporting on Spot committees and in wider oversight and advisory capacities. 42% of our volunteers are female, with active steps being taken to increase through our gender equity work. They gain extensive skills in leadership, education, and entrepreneurship, as well as growing in confidence and well-being. This leads them to advance in their careers or gain increased funding through entrepreneurship, implementing wider change in their communities which benefits the well-being of their families, friends and children.

Wider community members benefit from students and young people gaining further skills, including core literacy and numeracy skills, that benefit the whole community in terms of improving the support parents have in e.g. accessing health care, completing official documents, also bringing in further income that benefits the community more widely. More students attend university, gain employment, and then return to their communities to lead a wider scale of change through supporting the Spots with their funds, skills or connections. 

28 staff members benefit from being part of a dynamic, fast-growing organization, gaining significant leadership and professional skills that enables them to achieve their own wider goals, Three EduSpots staff members have gained full scholarships to study in Europe.

We have a strong focus on ensuring that Catalysts from across the network have been involved in not only developing and executing the EduSpots solution collaboratively, but also 60% of our staff team have transitioned from rural Spot volunteer backgrounds.  

In 2023, 100% of our Catalysts agreed that “they feel able to contribute my ideas to EduSpots' development as an organisation'' with 67% strongly agreeing.  The definition of the problem and design of the Spot as a solution has been led and guided by users. All our Spots have been created with local stakeholders and users including traditional leaders, local education authorities, religious organisations, district assemblies, headteachers, teachers, parents and students with Spot Management Committees overseeing activities. 

In creating a blueprint of our model, we employed a Spot Project Leader to lead a process of collaborative research. This has led to the development of our wider ‘Dream Spot Model’ diagram and accompanying handbook. 

Our Ignite, Catalyse and Peer Mentoring Programmes were designed through research with Catalysts and students using a range of inclusive strategies including ImpactEd surveys, Spot visits, phone calls (including in local language), WhatsApp discussion, interviews and working groups, with volunteers determining programme themes and activities, consulting their students in this process. For example, in 2022 Catalysts called for a female empowerment strand, which led to the establishment of a working group, and later the design and delivery of the Ignite Girls clubs in 2023. Following this, communities called for the strand to include boys, enabling both genders to come together to solve gender-specific challenges, leading to a reframe as ‘Ignite Equity’. 

In 2022, we introduced the remunerated Peer Mentor role as a method to ensure a strong Catalyst voice within all staff team programme design and decision-making, with 18 Peer Mentors so far passing through this programme. 

Two of the three full-time staff and managers have joined through the Catalyst network. Cat Davison, CEO/Founder, although not Ghanaian, is Ghana-based, and has spent around 3 years across the past 8 years living in Ghanaian communities to better understand the workings of the Spots with a very grounded and collaborative approach to leadership. She is a 2021 UNESCO-backed Global Teacher Prize Finalist, and having previously taught full-time for 10 years in both the UK and Ghana, understands the practical nature of the classroom environment and ensures the solution is focused on the needs of teachers, community educators and learners.

We have a strong presence in Ghana, with our most recent Digital Launch Event supported by Mr Aaron Akwaboah, Director for Strategy and Innovation at the Ministry of Education; Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann, Dean of the School of Engineering Sciences, University of Ghana, and National Science and Maths Quiz Host, among other invited guests. 

We have a wide range of programme related partners who support the delivery of our work, bringing in their specialist experience in the context; this include West African Primate Conservation Agency, Dext Technology, GhScientific, African Science Academy, among others. 

Since 2015, community teams have led the creation of a network of 50 education spaces in 50 communities across 15 regions in Ghana (2 in Kenya, and 12 solar-powered), bringing together a collaborative network of over 300 Catalysts in this process via WhatsApp, impacting 10,000+ learners. These Catalysts are already implementing our Dream Spot Model in various stages, with constant reflection on advancements of the model. We have developed an App to support the local running and effective monitoring of Spots, and we are in the process of rolling out a digital devices and digital learning strategy across 50 Spots, embedded through our existing Spot model and programmes. 

We have established strong programmes to deliver this model. In 2023, we developed and delivered the Ignite Programme which equips over 300 Catalysts with training across Spot Leadership, Keeping Spots Safe, early years literacy, Junior High School (JHS) creative literacy, STEM and environmental education, and gender equity. Catalysts opt to lead up to five of these strands at their Spots with a support plan of monthly challenges, online training, resource kits and recognition systems, creating Ignite Equity, EduLit, EcoSTEM and EduKidz clubs. 

We have devised the Catalyse Leadership Programme (delivered in a similar form since 2021) which enables Catalysts to gain skills across Spot leadership, creating a Catalyse Project targeting sustainable change, equipped with flexible grant funding. From this, 14 Catalysts have now passed onto our Peer Mentor Programme which progresses them into remunerated semi-staff mentoring positions with 8 Catalysts becoming staff members. We have completed three independent studies through Impact Ed’s software, showing significant rises in self-efficacy, school engagement, interest in reading, teamwork and citizenship values. 

We have developed a strong staff team to work with Catalysts to develop this work, alongside a strong set of systems and policies that enable us to deliver  impact in a remote working environment. 

We have had 20 trust funds support our work across 2023-2024, with the following medium sized grants gained:

£80,000 (Gower Street Trust, unrestricted)

£25,000 (mc2h foundation, unrestricted)

£15,000 (Gower Street Trust, app funding) 

£60,251 (EA Foundation, grant for 2 years of Catalyse Programme)

£43,811 (BFSS, 2 years of Ignite Programme funding) 

£19690 (Fonthill Foundation, support of digitalisation process)

Our income in 2023 was £171,415.60. 

We want to explore opportunities to scale our work considering business models, partnerships, intellectual property and legal implications, exploring stakeholder responsibility. We want to equip the leadership team with the skills and systems to lead this transition effectively, also trialing our Spot model in new contexts. 

We want to advance the quality of our training resources and approach, particularly in relation to Spot Leadership and our EcoSTEM strand, exploring more widely how we can deliver the most effective training programmes and resources as we grow the organization further and continue to gradually extend the number of Spots.

We would like to gain support from experienced experts in EdTech and digital tools as we continue to move through our digitalisation process. Through distributing devices across the network with digital training, we aim to enhance educational and operational outcomes. In this process, we will continue to trial and advance the EduSpots app, also exploring a range of wider apps to enhance the citizen skills of learners, using AI tools responsibly in this process e.g. to monitor local pollution levels, forecast weather, track ecosystems etc. 

We are currently reviewing our financial systems and the complexities of accounting split across Ghana and the UK (we have UK and Ghanaian registered organisations); we would appreciate further insight and experience here. 

We would benefit from additional funding opportunities to enable us to gain the core funding to bring the right staff on board to strengthen our core model, and investigate pathways for scaling our work and extending the depth and sustainability of our current impact.

Technology: Our unique App enables communities to create and sustain their own community-led education systems, bringing community stakeholder groups together, linked to our Dream Spot Model. Accessed via tablets, this enables local tracking of information such as user sign-in, resources, fundraising and finance with Catalysts accessing training and resources, submitting challenges, and gaining recognition. Catalysts from 32 selected communities are involved in trialing the app and tablets, reviewing the functionality, and adding additional features in line with their needs, ideas and ambitions for their communities. 

Emergent network: We do not ‘come in’ to communities; rather our locally-driven team invites applications to join an organic movement, with 5 cases of Catalysts who have moved communities establishing new Spots. 

Community ownership of both EduSpots as an organisation and Spots: 60% of staff come from Catalyst backgrounds, with a focus on collaborative decision-making via WhatsApp, zoom meetings, calls, conferences and team-based action. Catalysts believe that advancing outcomes in their community is their responsibility with Spots owned and sustained by communities. 

Spots model behaviours: Spots are innovation hubs for wider change in the community, with environmental action and discussions of gender equity igniting wider conversation. Likewise, students are not only taught citizenship, digital and sustainability skills - they see volunteerism modelled, and become the future Catalysts of change, leading to a multiplier effect. 

Pedagogy: Collaboration, creativity and play are at the core of our pedagogy with integration of digital skills; volunteers run clubs supported by resources including practical teamwork-centred projects that are community-connected whilst curriculum-linked. Catalysts gain motivation and intercultural knowledge through sharing ideas across multiple regions via WhatsApp. 

Vision: A world in which communities create the sustainable futures they want to see through education. 

This vision aims to address the problem of students not having safe spaces to learn and accompanying resources, also giving them the skills for the future that they need to thrive, stretching across digital, citizenship and teamwork competencies.  

Activities: We achieve this vision through the technology-enabled and app-based three Catalyst training programmes, listed above: the Ignite Programme, the Catalyse Leadership Programme, the Peer Mentoring Programme, alongside the EduSpots staff professional development programme. 

Outputs: These inclusively and collaboratively designed programmes lead to the outputs of learners clubs and activities at the Spot level, with Spot teams creating sustainable local systems for community-led education, with change facilitated and tracked through the EduSpots app, using EduSpots’ digital devices and wifi kits. 

Outcomes: This leads to four key outcomes: 10,000+ learners advance their skills in literacy, sustainability leadership and teamwork; school-based pedagogy becomes more practical, sustainable and community-connected; 300+ Catalysts gain confidence, optimism and teamwork skills; 10,000+ diverse voices are heard, respected and included across the communities. 

Impact: 

 1. 10,000+ learners become lifelong learners, digital leaders and active global citizens, becoming the future Catalysts of change (this is already happening at scale).

2. 300+ Catalysts become motivated, critically informed and active global citizens within EduSpots, and beyond. 

3. 10,000+ Community members work together to advance educational outcomes.  

Example of impact measured (see 2022 impact report here)

Catalysts: A 2021 independent Impact Ed study of Catalyse programme using validated scales saw an advance in self-efficacy by 11.9%, well-being by 8.2% & citizenship values by 5.3%. Peer Mentors increased listening skills by 7.2%. 

Students: A 2023 ImpactEd quantitative study using validated measures across 9 months on our EcoSTEM members demonstrated an increase in learners’ school engagement by 5.4%; a study on our EduLit members reflected an 8% increase in interest in reading for pleasure with a 4% rise in metacognition. 

Spots: Following Ignite Programme, in 2023, we saw a 113.3% increase in challenge submissions, an 117.4% increase in Spot learners, with a 23% increase in volunteers.  

Objectives for 2024: 

Spots and digitalisation: We aim to strengthen the reach and quality of educational delivery of our existing network of 50 community-led education Spots through effective coaching and regular visits of our new regional coordinator team, alongside advancing our monitoring and evaluation systems via the EduSpots app, and rolling out digital devices. Our target is 20,000 Spot learners per annum across the network. 

Catalysts: We will strengthen the knowledge, skills and commitment of our network of our existing network of 426 local Catalysts through further advancing our Ignite Programme, Catalyse Leadership Programme and Peer Mentoring Programme, with a particular focus on digital skills, sustainability leadership and teamwork, also equipping them with context-specific resources and flexible grant funding. We aim to strengthen the most active volunteers to 200 consistently highly active and responsive Catalysts. 

Students: We will involve 2500 underserved learners in community-led EcoSTEM, EduLit, Ignite Equity and EduKidz clubs, with a further 15,000+ students using our safe spaces for learning, advancing their literacy and digital skills, engagement in education, and cluster of future-facing skills. 

Research: We will clarify a blueprint for the Spot Model, completing an independent study on our model, linked to our theory of change. 

Organisational: We aim to improve our organizational systems and monitoring processes, especially through the app, upskilling staff in operational and digital skills, alongside strategic thinking. 

Measuring change:

Spot outputs: Spot data including user visits, book borrowing, opening hours, activities, local fundraising, active volunteers, community engagement, committee meetings etc. The new app will enable us to track this data live. Spot visits examine effective use of digital tools, safeguarding training and systems, alongside verifying Spot output data submitted and sustainability practices. 

Catalysts: We partner with Impact Ed to independently evaluate changes to Catalysts including validated surveys exploring sense of community, goal orientation, teamwork, well-being, and active listening (baseline, midpoint and end-point surveys), alongside qualitative questions. We conduct semi-structured interviews using the Most Significant Change methodology, alongside a focus on understanding application of safeguarding policies.

Students: We use Impact Ed’s validated surveys (baseline, mid-point and final) exploring self-esteem, school engagement, interest in reading, self-efficacy, emotional engagement in maths and science, teamwork and self-efficacy, relating to students enrolled in EcoSTEM, EduLit and Ignite Equity clubs. EduKidz clubs use the ASER literacy tool with a baseline, mid-point and post programme.  We are partnering with Worldreader to be able to access data relating to the number of books/pages read and similar output staistics, using their app. 

Other strategies: Semi-structured interviews with students and Catalysts, especially in relation to use and effectiveness of digital tools and training.  Observation of clubs, leading to further learning and review of pedagogy and digital tools.  

Independent study: We plan to further understand the impact of our work on the wider community through an independent study in 2024. 

EduSpots App 

Our research indicates that there is currently no app that enables communities to track and manage their own education systems - or more simply - to create, run and reimagine their community-led libraries, despite hundreds of thousands of community-led education projects existing across the world. 

Conceived from the outset as a ‘Facebook for community educators’, the EduSpots app was intended to strengthen the EduSpots community, enabling local Catalysts to build individual and Spot profiles, update activities and achievements, and engage with staff and other Catalysts across the network. 

The key initial function of the app is to provide Catalysts with a tool that enables them to coordinate and track local Spot activities. This includes registration of new Spot learners and volunteers, gaining permissions and completing checks, and monitoring their engagement with the Spot’s activities and resources. 

The app will in turn enable EduSpots’ staff team to track Spot opening hours, resource borrowing, club activities, learner and Catalyst participation and local fundraising at a glance, allowing the team to provide strong mentorship to our Catalysts based on the data received, also enabling EduSpots to better understand and monitor their impact. 

In time, the app will also be a vital tool for management of our programmes for both Catalysts and learners, with Catalysts accessing a wide range of training programmes, monthly challenges and resources, also gaining feedback, recognition and support.

Catalysts and Spots will be able to build personalized profiles, receive programme certification and recognition, and interact with others across the EduSpots network, thus strengthening the relationships with and between their growing volunteer base across 15 regions of Ghana.  

EduSpots’ in-house story books such as our Kwame’s Adventures Series, set in Spot communities, will also be placed on the app.

The app and accompanying digital strategy was launched with the support of the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Ghana’s Ministry of Education.

Wider digitalisation process 

The app is being trialed alongside a wider digitalisation process, through which EduSpots is providing an initial cluster of Spots with over 100 tablets and accompanying wifi kits, that will allow them to access the app, alongside a wide range of other educational apps, enabling them to access learning tools and online books including curriculum specific textbooks. 

Across the past 8 years, EduSpots has supported communities with electrical connectivity, whether connecting Spots to the national grid, or installing solar power to also ensure that Spots can thrive through regular periods of light-out in Ghana. 

EduSpots plans to roll-out the app and wider digitalisation process to its full network of 300 Catalysts across 50 communities through the relaunch of its two-year Ignite Programme planned for the end of 2024.

Wider use of technology 

We are a fully remote working team, including all volunteers and staff. We make highly effective use of Office 365, alongside using zoom for regular online meetings, and around 20 WhatsApp groups for effective group-based and educational communication across the spots and programme strands. 

Ghana Full-time: 4

Ghana Part-time: 11

UK/Nigeria part-time: 4

Interns: 3

Peer Mentors: 6

TOTAL: 28

+ Local community-based volunteers: 300

The first Spot was created in December 2015, 8.5 years ago. 

EduSpots was registered in the UK in April 2016, 7.5 years ago

The more strategic digitalisation process and app began in 2023 (some starting points from 2020 with laptop kits), with an official launch in 2024.

EduSpots greatly values diversity and seeks to include diverse perspectives in all that it does. For instance:

• Job opportunities are advertised widely to reach a range of potential candidates and we try to have people from diverse backgrounds on our interview panels.

• Organisational decisions - on strategy, funding, policies, etc - are made in consultation with staff and volunteers, with all perspectives welcomed. 

• Decisions that relate to understanding a specific context, are made by those with lived or learned experience of that specific context (e.g. relating to a specific Spot or community). 

• Employment policies and practices are regularly reviewed to see how they can be more inclusive and supportive to staff.

• Training and development opportunities are shared with all staff and volunteers and they are encouraged to grow in their roles.

• We have established a well-being working group, inviting representatives from across the different strands of our organisation, as one formal example of ensuring diverse voices contribute to our organization strategy and inclusive practices. 

• Alongside inclusivity playing a key function in our Dream Spot Model, and programme design, our Ignite Equity programme specifically aims to raise awareness and bring forward community-led solutions to gender inequities. 

• We have a strong awareness of power inequity, especially considering our UK/Ghana partnership, with constant reflection on decision-making and behaviours, using postcolonial thinking as a constant critical lens. 

• Our leadership team includes 63% women, with our Founder/CEO gaining insight into disability and wider inclusion through her own ongoing experience of M.E. Our Chair of Trustees, Professor Gloria Agyemang (previous Head of the Management School at Royal Holloway University) is a Ghanaian woman. 

EduSpots’ Equal Opportunity/Diversity and Inclusion Policy was last reviewed in July 2023.

At the community level, all ongoing costs are sustained by the Spot communities (led by Spot community committees) or schools themselves, avoiding any sense of long-term dependency on EduSpots’ central funding. 

EduSpots provides communities with a service in the form of training (through the Ignite, Catalyse and Peer Mentoring Programmes) in building their own capacity for income generation through engaging Catalysts in extensive training in income generation, looking at enterprise, grant applications and fee-based models for some services. We have our own small grant application processes, which acts as a stepping stone for Spots to apply for their own grant funding directly, with our support and mentorship. This enables them to lead their own educational initiatives, building from community needs and aspirations. 

Spots apply to join the network, with clarity from the outset in terms of our support package, which combines a mixture of access to our app, digital tools, access to programmes and resource and renovation support. We give communities culturally relevant books and textbooks, alongside 2 EduSpots tablets and wifi kits, and small grants to support the renovation of a space and required furniture. 

We have found that marketing our ‘Spot package’ to communities clearly, with a clear strategy for new Spot integration, helps to attract community teams who are eager to use the support given and have the mindset to add their own ideas to the development of the network. Our studies have proven that this is more effective than going to communities with the EduSpots concept, learning that EduSpots' model must be community-driven from the outset. The resources are highly valued by the Catalysts and learners given the lack of basically educational and technological resources in Spot communities, and safe spaces to study with light. 

Marketing to learners is led by local communities who are best positioned to do this effectively, both for learners and Catalysts. The Spots are free to access, with learners understanding EduSpots’ aims and ethos, and available resources and services from the local leaders. Some communities have added a charge for additional programmes or training, to fund an ongoing fixed librarian or Spot renovations. In some communities, parent teacher associations give a proportion of their fees to the Spot to ensure its effective opening, maintenance and resourcing. 

Catalysts who join as volunteers at existing Spots understand that they become part of an active network, with opportunities for programme engagement, monthly zoom training and WhatsApp communities, alongside regular opportunity sharing and a range of recognition strategies for the volunteers. 

See below for more information on income streams. 

EduSpots packages its work through programmes (which combine core costs, staffing, small grants, resources, training & Spot visits) that are supported by grants which aim to strengthen our network and build the capacity of the community teams to run their Spots sustainability in the longer-term. We avoid any payments from EduSpots to community-led Spots for unsustainable costs (e.g. electricity bills, food, volunteer payments etc). 

Our largest income stream is grants with over 20 mostly UK-based trusts and foundations supporting our work in 2023-2024 with an income of over £171,415.60 in 2023, despite only having a small team of 2 one day per week part-time staff working on funding applications, working alongside the CEO. With further support, we believe we can greatly strengthen our funding base in the next 2 years, given our current success trajectory. 

We have gained the following medium sized grants in the last 2 years: 

£80,000 (Gower Street Trust, unrestricted)

£25,000 (mc2h foundation, unrestricted)

£15,000 (Gower Street Trust, app funding) 

£60,251 (EA Foundation, grant for 2 years of Catalyse Leadership Programme)

£43,811 (BFSS, 2 years of Ignite Programme) 

£19690 (Fonthill Foundation, support of digitalisation process)

We sell our online courses offering critical perspectives on global development to UK and international schools, raising over £20,000 in the last 3 years through school partnerships and online courses. We have plans to advance the format of the online courses, using a new moodle format, and embedding learnings from across our network into the course design, aiming to raise additional sales through a clear marketing strategy working with schools and universities, with Catalysts gaining free access. 

We have a strong communications and campaign management skill-set within the team, and have raised over £35,000 in the last year through a ‘drive for Digitalisation’campaign with Wanderlust Ghana that went viral, featuring on BBC news, alongside a successful Big Give appeal, being awarded the Big Give supporters’ choice award in 2022. 

We have recently applied for the Their World Education Innovation Scale-Up Awards with a $50,000 prize, having been selected as one of 10 finalists in 2023, and gaining feedback that we were a high-scoring finalist.