Transparency First

New open-UNICEF portal provides comprehensive information on flow of fund’s investment from donor to pooled fund

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is pleased to announce a new transparency mechanism that provides up-to-date and comprehensive information on the flow of the Fund’s investments from donors to our pooled fund, and from the pooled fund to grantees. The portal features a map detailing the countries where the Fund invested and current levels of disbursements to grantees in UN Agencies, International NGOs and National NGOs.

Education Cannot Wait is a global fund hosted by UNICEF, and the portal is part of the Open UNICEF Portal. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure.

Transparency is an essential component of Education Cannot Wait’s core objectives, and will be a cornerstone in achieving the goals outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For education in crisis and Sustainable Development Goal 4, transparency means faster response, more coordinated approaches and linked tracking from end-to-end. It’s this system-wide approach that’s necessary to connect more partners and crowd-in the resources, knowledge and tools needed to fill the US$8.5 billion funding gap that’s left 75 million girls and boys living in crisis behind.

THE VALUE OF POOLED FUNDS

The new portal provides Education Cannot Wait’s key stakeholders with an easy-to-understand visualization of the true value of a pooled fund concept. The idea behind this is simple. By partnering together, donors generate a bigger impact – and a more comprehensive approach – than stand-alone initiatives. This pooled approach also ensures more sustainability for these investments. Small contributions work together with larger contributions to reach scale and impact with invested funds. It also reduces transactional costs as pooled resources are bundled to reach common goals.

This is a positive step forward in Education Cannot Wait’s transparency efforts. At this early stage, the current transparency portal captures the resources being channeled through the global trust fund hosted by UNICEF. One of the core components of the Education Cannot Wait model is to catalyze additional resources at the country level through country-level co-financing, private-sector and civil-society engagement, and through donor-aligned investments that will be mobilized through the Education Cannot Wait-facilitated multi-year resilience programmes. As these multi-year resilience programmes advance, the Fund will work with its partners to track the flow of these funds and ensure greater transparency.

In the end, the goal of transparency is simple: Ensure funds reach the people who need them most through more comprehensive, coordinated and integrated approaches. These efforts toward transparency align with the New Way of Working and the UN Secretary General’s vision for increased efficiency across the UN system.

“We are reforming our development system to become much more field-focused, well-coordinated and accountable to better assist countries through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – our contribution to a fair globalization. And to underpin all these efforts we are pursuing sweeping management reform – to simplify procedures and decentralize decisions, with greater transparency, efficiency and accountability.” – UN Secretary General António Guterres.