Seeds planted, fruits harvested

We’ve been quiet in 2025, but that’s not because we’ve been complacent. Far from it! As the year winds down, we have been reflecting on 2025 through the lens of a harvest. For many folks in our sector, this year felt less like a harvest, and more like a season of burning fields. And yet, “sometimes only fire can germinate a seed.”

So this year, we asked ourselves (and now ask you): What seed did you plant in 2025 that you’re tending as it grows? And what did you harvest that you’re stockpiling to sustain you through the year ahead?

Below, we reflect on both. Some seeds were sown in fertile ground—coalitions formed, funds and surveys launched, toolkits developed—that won’t bear whole fruit for seasons to come. And we harvested plenty: research that deepens our understanding, tools that sharpen our practice, and evidence that guides our path forward.

Thank you to this broader community for helping cultivate this garden with us.

Planted Seeds: What We’re Watching Grow

The Echidna Parade has grown! 

Lydia Wilbard joined our team in August to lead our work on Adolescent Life Skills in Africa, bringing with her decades of work as the co-founder CAMFED Tanzania, and a recent stint as an Echidna Global Scholar where she researched women’s leadership in education, emphasizing the need to break barriers and cultivate women leaders to nurture a more inclusive ecosystem.

India Coalition for Education for Gender Equality

UNGEI and Breakthrough brought together 21 organizations—civil society, research institutions, multilaterals, and funders—to launch the India Coalition for Education for Gender Equality, advancing gender-transformative education across all Indian states.

Accelerator For Shifting Gender Norms Through Education

This collective of 12 organizations has defined a shared strategy to deepen and disseminate evidence-based models that effectively shift harmful gender norms during adolescence through school systems. Facilitators of this network, Erin Ganju and Sohini Bhattacharya, also delved into gender norms on the Decoding Impact podcast.

FLIGHT Fund: Government-Led Foundational Learning

African countries are renewing their commitment to improving foundational learning outcomes at a time when development assistance is decreasing. The Foundational Learning Initiative for Government-Led Transformation (FLIGHT) is intended to bridge this gap by responding to government demand with African expertise to enable government-led solutions. FLIGHT is built to be different: light on process, big on government ownership, and focused on what truly drives learning.

Fruits Harvested: What’s Nourished Our Work

HERI: An Africa-Led Research Initiative

Since 2022 we have been nurturing work to support more African-led education research. This started with a Forum for Education Research in/by/for Africa, led to the African Education Research Funding Consortium, and culminated in a major harvest this year: the launching of Harnessing Education Research for Impact in Africa (HERI-Africa). Bringing together experts across universities, government, philanthropy, and civil society, HERI-Africa will strengthen African-led evidence generation and disrupt the cycle where education research funding disproportionately flows to the Global North. 

Reflecting on How to Support Impact at Scale

We interrogated how our grantmaking strategy and approaches support impact at scale and offered our reflections in a case study on Echidna Giving’s approach to scaling, published by the Scaling Community of Practice. It’s both a harvest of our learning and a seed we’re sharing with others! Program Officer Sara Ruto reflected on similar themes on the FreshEd podcast.

Kenya Childcare Stakeholder Engagements

This past year, Echidna gathered government, civil society, funders, and private sector leaders in Nairobi to explore a Political Economy Analysis of Kenya’s childcare sector. Finalized by a 21-member Kenya childcare funder and implementer group, the report maps the networks and relationships that shape childcare and points toward new opportunities to grow stronger, together.

Other Freshly Picked Fruits

• Amplify Girls’ Agency Portal is an open-source tool to measure girls’ agency. Echidna is currently funding efforts to adapt the tool for the Indian context as well — more to come!

• Keep your eye out next year for a practical toolkit for education organizations hoping to identify whether they’re reinforcing inequities, being gender-sensitive, or pushing toward deeper transformation. We have been learning from the experience of 14 grantees’ work in this area in order to create a toolkit that we will roll out next year.
• This year’s cohort of Echidna Global Scholars shared insights on centering girls’ voices in post-conflict Uganda; strengthening Indigenous women teachers’ leadership in Argentina; examining gender-responsive pedagogy in Zimbabwe; and advancing Ubuntu Womanism to promote girls’ leadership in rural Zambia at a recent research symposium, hosted by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. 
• PAL Network’s ICAN–ICAR 2025 Report offers comparable findings from 12 countries on children’s foundational literacy and numeracy, based on household assessments.

As we close out 2025, we’re grateful for what’s been planted and what’s been gathered. Some seeds will take years to mature; some harvests will sustain us through lean seasons ahead. Both matter.

What are you planting? What are you gathering? We’d love to hear from you as we head into the new year. Here’s to the slow work of growth and the satisfaction of the harvest!