A proposal by the Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee to help the children of war-torn Syria was declared the winner Wednesday of the MacArthur Foundation’s highly unusual $100 million grant competition.
The choice of the winner of the Chicago grant maker’s “100&Change” challenge, which created a huge stir among nonprofits when it was announced in June 2016, appeared to be at least partially a response to President Trump’s policies. It indirectly supports two of his targets: immigrants from Muslim-majority countries and public television. Though the president was not mentioned by name, he has sought to restrict travel to the United States from Syria and certain other Muslim-majority countries and to cut federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The huge investment could draw further attention to the plight of refugees from Syria and the damaging effects war has on early childhood development, said Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshop’s executive vice president for global impact.
“This is such a validation of the importance of these issues,” she said. “It’s beyond words. How many chances do you get to change the world? This is one of those times.”
David Milibrand, the chief executive of International Rescue Committee, sounded a similar theme, in a statement.
“At a time when governments are in retreat, NGOs and philanthropists need to step up, and that is what we are seeing here — and in a big way.”
Pleasant Surprise for the Runners-Up
The two nonprofits stood out among a total of 1,904 proposals made in response to the Chicago grant maker’s “100&Change” challenge. In an unanticipated move, MacArthur said it would give $15 million each to three other finalists, Catholic Relief Services, Harvest Plus, and Rice 360° Institute for Global Health at Rice University.
MacArthur narrowed the number of subject areas it supports in 2016, indicating that it wanted to make “big bets” that had the potential to transform society. By setting up a competition for a large series of grants outside its program areas, MacArthur attempted to show that there may be opportunities outside of its range of expertise that merited support.
Informed by a panel of judges, MacArthur’s board picked the Sesame Workshop and International Rescue Committee proposal in recognition of the “incredible immediacy of the refugee situation and the fact that the education of young children affected by trauma and displacement is a neglected problem that has long-term consequences not only for those individuals but for the societies in the countries they have left,” said Julia Stasch, MacArthur’s president in an interview.
Also weighing in their favor was that the two groups had many years of combined experience in early-childhood education and a track record of work in the Middle East, both in Syria and in countries hosting refugees, she said.
Ms. Stasch said that less than 2 percent of global aid budgets are directed to education. She called the $100 million commitment the “largest early-childhood intervention program ever created in a humanitarian setting.”
‘Toxic Stress’
The goal of the support is to address the “toxic stress” experienced by children in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria.
The money will go toward developing a regional version of Sesame Street, the educational television show that features Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and other puppet characters. The show will work to develop reading, math, language, and social and personal development for an estimated 9.4 million children.
In addition, the grant will support the development of curricula and educational materials, pay for home visits, and the construction and operation of child-development centers for 1.5 million of the most vulnerable children in the region.
On average, refugees are displaced for about 10 years, making it difficult for children to access classes, according to Ms. Westin. The program’s curricula, which will be in Arabic and Kurdish, could serve as a model for refugee education efforts globally, she said.
Ms. Westin, who noted that Sesame Street was launched with the help of “audacious philanthropy” of the Carnegie Corporation and Ford Foundation in the 1960s, said pilot funding of $250,000 from the Open Society Foundations and the Bernard van Leer Foundation in early 2016 helped get the project on MacArthur’s radar screen.
Getting Other Foundations on Board
One of the goals of the 100&Change gift was to open up the grant-making process and provide other foundations with information about compelling projects. Some have expressed interest in providing support to the other finalists in addition to the $15 million MacArthur will give to each of them, Ms. Stasch said.
“We wanted to signal our confidence in the other finalists as compelling, impactful solutions,” she said. “All four were compelling and actually warranted investment.”
MacArthur hopes other donors dig even deeper. All of the proposals can be viewed at the Foundation Center’s 100&Change Solutions Bank and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice evaluated 200 of the entries.
“We have a lot to offer other donors who are not just interested in the finalists and semifinalists but in the broad array of proposals from around the world,” Ms. Stasch said, noting in particular pitches to reduce recidivism in the criminal-justice system and to provide sustainable clean water. “Recognizing the diversity of philanthropy, the diversity of solutions, will be appealing,” she predicted.
The foundation plans to repeat the contest in three years and will likely offer revisions to the format during the second half of 2018. As the grant maker sorts through applications, it plans to investigate whether its own criteria for funding left certain organizations or subject areas out, according to Cecilia Conrad, a managing director at the foundation who leads the 100&Change effort.
“We’re going to look at this carefully to make sure we’re not unintentionally limiting what we’re open to,” she said.
