LEGO Foundation provides financial building blocks to Grand Challenges Canada

Grand Challenges Canada, an impact-first investor serving low and middle-income countries, will be able to better support its Inclusive Learning in Crisis Settings program, thanks to a nearly $14 million grant from The LEGO Foundation, announced last week at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. 

Funds will go towards locally-led, systems-focused innovations in early childhood development and education in Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya, and Uganda. All four countries are currently home to large refugee populations, including many displaced children and their families.

Nine seed projects will receive about $250,000 each to develop, test and refine their respective initiatives. Between $300,000 and $1.5 million will also be provided to as many as seven already proven innovations, allowing them to scale up and reach more children in need.

Dr. Fawad Akbari, Grand Challenges Canada’s director of humanitarian innovation, said the funding would “address the ‘polycrisis’ that children, their families, caregivers and communities face” during conflict and other emergencies. 

“Through the lessons from this program, we hope to inform and influence the child development ecosystem as a whole. We invite other partners to join us and grow it to a global initiative,” he said.

The program will draw on the insights and resources of two other Grand Challenges Canada portfolios: Saving Brains, launched in 2011, and Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge, created in 2018 and receives funding from several countries, including Canada and the Netherlands.

The organization said this new funding will help tackle the complicated ways simultaneous economic, geopolitical, health and environmental shocks impact child development, wellbeing, and prospects.

According to the United Nations, the need for humanitarian assistance is estimated to have doubled over the last five years. More than 400 million children currently live in conflict areas conflict, and an estimated 1 billion children live in areas vulnerable to the extreme impacts of climate change.

“For over a decade, Grand Challenges Canada has supported locally-led innovation focused on healthy early childhoods through our Saving Brains portfolio of investments. Amid staggering increases in the need for humanitarian assistance in the last five years, it is imperative that we invest in supporting children in crisis settings,” said Grand Challenges CEO Dr. Karlee Silver. 

“We are grateful to the LEGO Foundation for their commitment to improving the lives of children.”

The foundation is dedicated “to building a future in which learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners.” It donated nearly $67 million to humanitarian programs throughout the two-day-long Global Refugee Forum.