Changing the Way We Care, a global initiative promoting family-based care for all children and a 100&Change finalist in 2017, knows the best place for a child is with family. Jomey Joseph of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) India and Anne Smith of Changing the Way We Care explain why family care is critical to helping families to stay together.

For the last two years, we have worked with the Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP) at the University of Pennsylvania to develop a toolkit called “Choosing Change: How to Assess Grant Proposals for Their Potential to Address Structural Inequality.” This free resource includes recommendations and criteria that can help donors who wish to identify ideas and proposals that have the best chance of reducing structural inequalities.

In December 2020, premier technology workforce development organization Per Scholas was announced as the awardee of the $10 million Economic Opportunity Challenge. Their “Proven Pathways to Transformative Careers in Tech” project will improve economic opportunities for low-income individuals within the United States.

On April 7, six teams gave their final pitch to win $100 million in the MacArthur Foundation’s second 100&Change competition. That same day, five of them learned they lost. These teams will all keep working after the recipient is announced, but this loss cuts deep. I know, because I was part of a team that “lost” in the final round of the first 100&Change competition.

As a family of national civil society organizations, Asylum Access believes in the power of “proximate” solutions: we know from our experiences that those closest to experiences of displacement are best placed to confront the obstacles that face their communities. As the movement for refugee leadership in response to refugee issues grew stronger, and the calls for refugee participation made it into prominent spaces – like the (UN Refugee Agency) UNHCR’s 2019 Global Refugee Forum – Asylum Access looked inward and asked: Where do we fit? How do we help? By our assessment, the calls for change were surface-level and lacked pathways for implementation. We needed massive investment for system-wide change. At the time, it was hard to envision unlocking that kind of funding.

Cecilia Conrad, Managing Director, 100&Change, provides an early look at the 2019 applicants in our global competition for a single $100 million grant.

Rene Celaya, Managing Director of Ahlan Simsim, reflects on Sesame Workshop and IRC’s progress in 2018 on their 100&Change project to support early childhood education in the Syrian response region.