In 2024, Digital Promise joined UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition to help advance educational transformation around the world. As part of our membership in this international effort, Digital Promise will support the GEC’s Digital Transformation Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder group committed to driving meaningful, holistic digital transformation across education systems. Digital Promise has identified initial areas of alignment between our own global work and the collaborative’s digital transformation framework and plans to leverage these initiatives to advance the framework globally.
Since launching in 2021, more than 730 educators from schools and youth organizations across 77 countries have engaged with the Ciena Solutions Challenge, a global design challenge by Digital Promise and Ciena that invites middle and high school students globally to use Challenge Based Learning to design solutions that address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within their communities.
The 2024 Ciena Solutions Challenge Sustainability Award recipients included 20 project teams that received a $2,500 Sustainability Award and 18 teams that received $500 to sustain and scale their projects. We also recognized student teams from Ciena Solutions Challenge Model Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. From earthquake emergency backpacks in Kazakhstan to green roofs in Peru, these projects showcase the talents of youth creators and changemakers from around the world.
In 2024, the McNulty Foundation and the Aspen Institute named Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO of Digital Promise and an Aspen Pahara Fellow, and Nedgine Paul Deroly, co-founder and CEO of Anseye Pou Ayiti (APA), as joint recipients of the McNulty Foundation’s prestigious John P. McNulty Prize due to their work equipping the next generation of education leaders in Haiti. Since 2021, APA and Digital Promise, alongside other local and international organizations, have partnered to implement a blended learning pilot program in rural Haiti. Alongside the other selected organizations, APA received $150,000 to continue its vital work.
The YouthMADE Festival is a global celebration of youth creativity and innovation where students, educators, and advocates around the world showcase student-led projects in making, activism, art, and design. In May 2024, the YouthMADE Festival hosted 20 live events and 46 pieces of content from students and teachers worldwide, with more than 500 people registered to take part in celebrating creative and innovative student work. For the first time, 10 recipients from six countries received a YouthMADE Festival Amplify Grant to expand and amplify student-led work. We also celebrated 49 youth creators and changemakers who received nominations for the YouthMADE Festival Community Awards, which invites teachers, students, families and community members around the world to recognize students who presented at the YouthMADE Festival.
