Expanding International Impact: Global Education Fund Launches Fourth Cohort of Grants to Support Early Childhood

March 18, 2026

At the Bainum Family Foundation, our vision of a society where all children thrive goes beyond borders. This commitment is extended through the Global Education Fund (GEF), which expands access to high-quality early care and education for young children around the world. GEF is part of the Family Philanthropy initiative, which supports the ongoing philanthropic efforts of four generations of the Bainum family.

Since 2015, GEF has supported three cohorts of grantee partners implementing three‑year early childhood projects primarily across Africa and Asia. The fourth cohort, spanning 2026–2028, is now underway. In this cohort, GEF is prioritizing proven, scalable, direct-service models that emphasize comprehensive nurturing care for holistic child development.

“[GEF leadership and team] went through a thoughtful process for selecting grantees, including a landscape analysis of needs and opportunities,” says Joan Lombardi, Ph.D., internationally recognized early childhood expert, and advisor to GEF. “They decided to focus on both direct services and capacity building.”

  • Photo from Learn To Play, Botswana

Direct-Service Partners

In this fourth cohort, GEF is proud to support the following new direct-service projects. You may find links to each partner’s website throughout the lists below:

  • Children in Crossfire, Ethiopia — Supporting displaced families in Addis Ababa
  • Learn To Play, Botswana — Embedding a community-led, play-based early childhood education model into Botswana’s government systems to expand equitable access to quality early learning
  • OneSky, Mongolia — Supporting, strengthening, and expanding the provision of independent child care services
  • Save the Children, Zanzibar — Establishing community-led child care collectives to expand access to safe, affordable, and quality child care services for the children of women engaged in fishing and seaweed farming industries
  • UNICEF, Togo — Expanding UNICEF’s market‑based child care service model

GEF is also proud to continue working with the following direct-service projects, which have been renewed or extended as part of the fourth cohort:

  • BRAC, Bangladesh — Strengthening child care practices and building care-provider capacities through BRAC’s Play Lab home-based child care model
  • Catholic Relief Services, Lesotho — Catalyzing quality, sustainable, and replicable daycare services
  • iACT, Chad — Continuing support of iACT’s community-led early childhood education program for refugee children in Eastern Chad
  • OneSky, Vietnam — Expanding OneSky’s training program for independent child care providers who care for children of migrant factory workers in industrial zones
  • PATH, Ghana — Developing and testing a model for improving child care by strengthening linkages between child care and primary healthcare, nutrition, and other relevant sectors

System-Strengthening Partners

In addition to direct-service projects, GEF is supporting systems-strengthening efforts that expand and improve early childhood services through leadership development and national-level capacity building:

“We’re delighted to support these great frontline and advocacy partners,” says Bruce Bainum, founder of GEF. “They understand both the challenges and rewards that come in attempting to meet the early education needs of young children from some of the most economically challenged communities around the world.” We are grateful to be on this journey with such incredible organizations who are inspiring the global systems change that is needed to support children and their families for both current and future generations.