Collective Impact Campus Q&A with PO Baptiste

We at Kiron created the Collective Impact Campus (CIC), a major initiative intended to help us build a better new normal by making access to quality education for refugees and the marginalized more sustainable, inclusive and disruption-proof.

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In today’s conversation with Baptiste Ottevaere, Product Owner at Kiron and one of the longest-serving members of the team, we will hear more about CIC and the opportunities it represents for us and our like-minded partner organisations.

What is Collective Impact Campus and how did Kiron come up with this initiative?

On the one hand, CIC is a product. NGOs start with their own spaces on Kiron Campus, where they can create and run their courses with the use of various tools and materials that we have been developing for the last 5 years.

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On the other hand, CIC is a network of like-minded organisations united with the common goal. This collaboration can give us and our partners an opportunity to evolve into a broader community by working together, supporting each other and exchanging best practices.

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The idea of CIC came from realizing that we at Kiron cannot achieve enough impact on our own. With so many students in need of education worldwide, we need local partners on the ground that understand the local contexts and have their own networks of students. These partners know best what kind of blended learning programs have the greatest value for their students.

What do NGOs get signing up for CIC?

Our partner NGOs receive their own, unique space within Kiron Campus – their CIC space. That includes their own signup/login page, branded interface, and numerous tools to design the learning environment for their students. Based on their needs, they can organise weekly live sessions that include their existing materials or design self-paced online courses. They can decide to include courses from our Kiron Catalog in their offer. Additionally, their students can make use of Kiron’s support infrastructure, such as scholarships or mentoring. And of course, partner NGOs can access the learning management system and analytics dashboards where they can track their students’ performance.
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On our part, we can help our CIC partners focus on their learners by automating a lot of administrative work, and by helping them improve their content with various tips and best practices on how to run online programs more efficiently, especially in the current environment.

Why is collaboration between organisations more important than ever?

In the ongoing pandemic, the problem of refugee education is among the most neglected. The consequences of the current crisis are hitting vulnerable populations harder. For instance, students in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp no longer have access to study centres where they could access devices and the internet. Such barriers in access to education for refugees have only increased, and most likely will be increasing due to the economic impact of the pandemic.

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That is why collective action is so important. We all should unite our forces and come up with collaborative initiatives to alleviate the consequences of the crisis. Working together should be the way forward to increase the positive impact on learners in times when resources and opportunities are limited.

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It is important to note that we came up with this partnership idea before the COVID-19 pandemic. Undeniably, CIC could be very beneficial for NGOs during the pandemic. But even beyond that, it can be an effective and sustainable solution to improving the educational experience for refugee students and disadvantaged learners worldwide.

What is your long term vision for CIC?

I hope that in the long term, those multiple learning pathways that we open up in collaboration with partners worldwide scale up and have a recognisable value everywhere. By that, I mean their value in accessing the job market or various academic opportunities, as well as personal value for students by giving them confidence and a sense of accomplishment and growth. It is important for us to know that our impact significantly increases our students’ chances to succeed in their goals. In the future, CIC should encourage more refugee people and disadvantaged learners to follow their individual students’ pathways, and attract even more partners to become a part of CIC.

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Our community of partners includes NGOs such as Paper Airplanes, Phoenix Space, and Humanity & Inclusion.

If you are interested in becoming part of CIC or would like to hear more about it, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.