25 April 2026

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has released its 2027–2030 Strategic Plan, designed to address the escalating needs of school-aged children in the world’s most severe crisis zones. This roadmap builds on a decade of experience to create a more agile and locally-led response. The plan arrives at a critical juncture as the number of affected children has surged to over 230 million across 60 countries, while global education aid faces a projected multibillion-dollar decline.

The new strategy streamlines ECW’s investment model to prioritize the most vulnerable adolescents and children through rapid and inclusive education. By focusing on evidence-based lessons from its first ten years of operation, the Fund aims to deliver more effective support despite the shifting global landscape. The plan emphasizes the necessity of acting swiftly to bridge the widening gap between increasing humanitarian demands and shrinking international funding.

For this period, ECW has set ambitious targets to reach 10 million crisis-affected youth and mobilize $600 million across a portfolio of 13 to 18 priority countries. Central to this mission is the implementation of the Crisis-Oriented Resilience and Emergency (CORE) modality. This single, integrated approach provides a flexible and multi-year investment framework to ensure that funding is both faster and more resilient in the face of ongoing emergencies.