Archives
January 2021
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / February 9, 2021
Welcome to 2021 — one month in and it has already been an action-packed year! In case you missed it, please encourage girls’ education leaders to apply for the 2021 cohort of Echidna Global Scholars at the Brookings Institution. Application deadline is February 19th. For a dose of inspiration, be sure to watch the swearing […]
Read MoreDecember 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / December 16, 2020
We have spent this year vacillating between feeling crushed by the pain and devastation this year has brought and feeling inspired by the coming together of many people to meet the needs of this moment. Our final Puggle for this year reflects on both the gifts and “gifts” of 2020, which can be read to […]
Read MoreNovember 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / December 8, 2020
The end of 2020 is (finally) in sight. So, where do things stand with respect to education? In this Puggle we provide some big picture updates on education systems and funding, we offer a few snapshots of the impact of the pandemic on education in sub-Saharan Africa and India, and we close with some research […]
Read MoreOctober 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / November 9, 2020
October was a big month! Here’s a quick rundown of the major pieces related to girls’ education, in case you were too busy keeping your eye on other things the past few weeks (which, truthfully, we’d understand!). Four major reports on (girls’) education were published this month: First, the Global Education Monitoring Report came out […]
Read MoreSeptember 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / October 15, 2020
September is typically a back-to-school month here in the U.S., but this year school looks a lot different. With many children going back to school online, it’s not surprising that this month we’ve seen a lot written about education technology. First, a new study from Brookings on “Realizing the Promise” of education technology to improve […]
Read MoreAugust 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / September 10, 2020
Our last post was a bit gloomy, so we’re dedicating this month’s Puggle to discussing solutions that might help the education sector to come out of this crisis stronger. We’re moved by the way Arundhati Roy describes this opportunity: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This […]
Read MoreJuly 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / August 3, 2020
What does COVID-19 mean for education and girls’ education in particular? We discuss four themes: (1) Education is in crisis. In fact, it faces more than one crisis. (2) The crisis is especially bad for girls. (3) The pessimistic view is that it will take a long time to recover and inequality will be starker for many years to come. (4) The optimistic view is that we’ll “build back better.”
Read MoreFebruary 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / March 4, 2020
February is the month of love. At least that’s what a whole bunch of retail marketers want us to believe. We don’t have anything to sell, but we are orienting this month’s Puggle around the theme of love…as it relates to girls’ education. The case for teaching love — or at least teaching socioemotional learning […]
Read MoreJanuary 2020
Dana Schmidt / The Puggle / February 12, 2020
Happy 2020! To kick off the year, we’re excited to share a recent episode of the Do One Better Podcast, in which host Alberto Lidji interviews Echidna Giving founders Craig Silverstein and Mary Obelnicki. Listen to the impetus behind founding Echidna Giving — including Craig’s theory of change, which, broadly characterized, “starts with girls’ education […]
Read MoreOur Grantees Spoke and Here’s What We Learned
Dana Schmidt / Insights / January 24, 2020
At the end of 2019 we asked Echidna Giving grantees for feedback on how we are doing. In the spirit of transparency, we would like to share what we learned and summarize how we plan to move forward.
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