“Locally led.” “Inclusive.” “Scalable.” “Sustainable.” These ideas appear everywhere in global development strategies, but putting them into practice inside education systems is considerably harder.
This September, Chance for Childhood is joining AfriKids, Link Community Development Malawi and Link Education International for a participatory side event during the UN General Assembly in New York. Together, we’ll be sharing a practical framework built around four essential Ls that we believe should sit at the heart of any effort to scale inclusive education: Local, Leave no-one, Leverage, and Links.
Why the 4 L’s matter
Education programmes working in low-resource settings face a distinct set of challenges including exclusion, harmful social norms, siloed interventions and the challenge of supporting children whose wellbeing and ability to learn are shaped by factors far beyond the classroom. Approaches that work in one community can also lose the very qualities that made them effective when organizations try to take them to scale.
Drawing on our collective experience across Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi and other settings, this session will explore what it takes to move past the buzzwords and into honest, grounded implementation. What does it look like to scale without losing local ownership? How can education systems embed support for marginalised groups rather than treating inclusion as a standalone intervention? How can locally developed solutions strengthen economic resilience, wellbeing and climate action alongside learning? And what kinds of partnerships allow good ideas to travel without simply being copied from one context to another?
What to expect
Rather than presenting the four Ls as a finished formula, the session will use them as a practical lens for participants to interrogate their own work. The hosts will briefly introduce common barriers they have encountered when trying to scale inclusive education approaches and share examples of how communities and organisations have responded. Participants will then apply the four Ls to their own contexts, examining where their programmes or systems are strong, where gaps remain, and what they could do differently.
The emphasis is on leaving with ideas and actions that can be tested in practice.
Who this is for
This session is designed for NGO and civil society leaders, education practitioners, funders, government partners and others working in low- and middle-income countries who are grappling with how to make education interventions more locally led, inclusive, connected and capable of reaching greater scale.
Registration
This event has now reached full capacity. If you’d like to join the waitlist, you can register here
This event is jointly hosted by Chance for Childhood, AfriKids, Link Community Development Malawi and Link Education International, as part of The Sidebar’s UNGA / Climate Week 2026 programme.