Giving Compass' Take:

• Chrystina Russell and Nina Weaver of Southern New Hampshire University share their story of how the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change competition helped kick-start their Global Education Movement (GEM) which increases the access for refugees to higher education.

• How does the GEM support refugee education and future employment? How are countries of operation and candidates chosen? In what way does the GEM impact the lives of participants?

• Learn more about global education.

Coming into a new position can often be daunting, and, as a result, most organizations start new employees and teams with smaller projects. But after joining Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) in 2016, one of the first emails in our inbox was from the university president asking us if we wanted to apply for MacArthur’s new and innovative competition: 100&Change. Seeking to secure $100 million was certainly no small endeavor; we were equally intimidated and enthralled by the prospects of achieving our first assignment.

President Paul LeBlanc was inspired by the success of our blended learning model in Rwanda, where refugee students complete a unique competency-based online degree program that delivers skills and professional competencies for 21st-century employment, with a particular focus on the business and tech sectors. Recognizing the potential to reach even more refugee and vulnerable learners, President LeBlanc encouraged us and our partner Kepler to dream—at a $100 million scale—about increasing access to higher education for refugees worldwide.

As we began to brainstorm and craft our proposal, we realized how exciting it was to think about scaling our impact at such magnitude. The flexibility of 100&Change allowed us the creativity to re-shape our highest-level goals in the context of an incredible opportunity—and thus the SNHU Global Education Movement (GEM) was born. Our application was written and revised across three different continents and six different cities before reaching its finalized state. We reshaped our academic model and approach for each new partner and country—Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Lebanon—ensuring we both upheld rigorous academic standards and molded ourselves to the environments in which we planned to serve students.

Read the full article about 100&Change and the Global Education Movement by Chrystina Russell and Nina Weaver at the MacArthur Foundation.