Four Agents of Change initiatives making education more accessible

In Unbound’s programs around the world, students eager to learn are often faced with barriers to education that go beyond the financial constraints.

Barriers often include having to attend schools where proper water, sanitation and hygiene facilities are lacking, where security concerns abound, and where a lack of equipment and classroom disrepair also hinder learning.

Unbound’s Agents of Change initiatives have been making education more accessible in communities across the globe since the platform was introduced in 2017.

Agents of Change grants were established to allow donors to fund community improvement projects led by local Unbound communities. Community members, typically small groups of mothers of sponsored children, draft a project proposal for access to an Agents of Change grant. Once a proposal is approved, funds go directly to the group, and they use them for such things as neighborhood safety initiatives, creating better access to clean water and health care, improving classrooms, strengthening transport infrastructure and more.

Since the platform’s inception, over 2,200 Agents of Change initiatives have been funded. In 2023 alone, 543 community improvement initiatives were carried out in 15 countries, totaling over $522,000 in grant funding.

In December of 2023, Unbound launched a new feature on its website that allows supporters to peruse through available Agents of Change proposals, giving them the ability to fund specific initiatives closest to their hearts. Since launch, 429 Agents of Change proposals have been funded, with over 30% related to education.

Education matters to Unbound’s families living in poverty. With the support of grant funding from Agents of Change, families are stretching beyond reducing poverty in their own lives to transforming the communities in which they live, work and learn. Here are just four Unbound Agents of Change community initiatives that have changed educational spaces for the better.

Improving classroom safety and infrastructure with Agents of Change — Tanzania, Africa

Education can help families and communities lift themselves out of poverty.

In Tanzania, however, over 1.7 million children of primary school age remain out of school. For those in rural communities, barriers to quality education are innumerable.

As a child, Beatrice’s barrier to education was affordability.

Beatrice dropped out of school after the sixth grade because her parents were struggling financially. But she never stopped believing that education was the key to success, and she wanted her own children to have the opportunity to forge a path different than her own.

“The reason education is so crucial is that it symbolizes social advancement for both children and the community as a whole,” said Beatrice.

With the support of Unbound sponsorship Beatrice has been able to give her son Erasto, 10, access to education. But the condition of the facilities at the only school near her home had begun to concern her and other parents, as it was interfering with students’ ability to learn.

Erasto’s classroom was especially concerning. The dirt floor meant students were always returning home covered in dust. The classroom windows had no coverings, which posed a danger by allowing anyone to enter at any time, resulting in occasional theft of property but also endless distractions. There was no door to the room, and large fissures in the walls raised doubts about the soundness of the structure.

When Beatrice’s Unbound parent support group learned they could make improvements in their community through Agents of Change, they immediately began considering how to help their local school.

“We chose the classrooms since children can’t receive the greatest education in a bad learning environment,” Beatrice said.

Combining their Agents of Change grant funding with that of another parent support group, the parents set about sourcing the labor for the initiative and purchasing materials such as cement, ballasts, windows and doors. The classroom renovation took two days to complete. The floor was coated in cement, the walls repaired, steel safety bars added to the windows and a door installed.

The initiative benefitted not only Unbound sponsored children, but all children in the community.

“I’m glad that the atmosphere is secure and conducive for children to focus well with their studies,” Beatrice said. “I'm proud to have been a part of the [initiative] and to serve as an example for other parents and their children in terms of fostering community cohesion.”

Improving access to playgrounds with Agents of Change — Quezon, Philippines

For more than 10 years, a playground in Fe’s community in the Philippines had been unusable.

Fe, the mother of an Unbound alumna and a parent leader, often walked around her community, noting areas that needed improvement. The playground, which was part of a day care center, was overgrown with weeds, filled with trash and equipment was broken.

“This need marks in my mind, to rehabilitate this playground for the safety of the children here in our community,” said Fe, who took her concern to her parent support group. “With the grace and mercy of God, our request was granted by Unbound through an Agents of Change initiative.”

The group combined the $450 grant with an additional $200 raised by Fe to seal the playground in concrete, replace the fence and add new equipment. Along with the parent support group, other members of the community volunteered to work on the initiative, including Fe’s husband, who was the only skilled welder. The project was completed in three days.

Fe takes pride now in seeing the joy of the children playing on the new playground and how happy her neighbors are about the outcome.

“We knew that we didn’t have money to do this project, but because of Unbound and [the donors], we were able to help our community and make our children and neighborhood happy,” Fe said. “From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”

Improving school sanitation and water accessibility with Agents of Change — Tanzania, Africa

Access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities has long been a challenge in Tanzania, where an average of only 57% of households have access to drinking water and only 25% have safely managed sanitation services, according to USAID.

But students also face WASH-related challenges in Tanzania’s primary and secondary schools. Challenges can include a lack of separate facilities for boys and girls, no changing rooms or hygiene facilities to support girls during menstruation, lack of water access and inaccessible latrines for students with physical disabilities. Access to sanitation in schools is critical as over 40% of diarrhea cases in schoolchildren result from transmission in schools.

For the rural public primary school in the community of Unbound mother leader Pendo, access to clean, running water and usable latrines was an issue impacting more than 1,500 students daily. The school’s previous well was old and no longer functioned. The school had new toilets but no running water and no budget to fix the issues.

Pendo’s daughter, sponsored youth Noel, who is now in high school, used to return home from school each day complaining about the school’s lack of water and dirty toilets. To have water throughout the day, students often walked to school carrying heavy jugs of water from home or gathered water from a nearby pond.

When Pendo’s Unbound mothers group had the opportunity to do an Agents of Change initiative, they knew they were going to choose a project that would make improvements to their children’s learning environments.

“We met with the teachers and found that there were a lot of issues, but the issue that was most pressing was this one,” Pendo said. “We saw how much the children in this school struggled to find and fetch water.”

With a $370 Agents of Change grant, the mothers group hired a plumber and bought the water tank and other materials. The plumber installed water pipes to the tank, taps on the tank and a pipe from the well to the school latrine. The initiative took one day to complete.

Now the school and the students have easy access to safe, running water for drinking, cleaning, washing hands, watering their school vegetable garden and using the toilets.

“Doing this on our own would have been difficult without the help [of Agents of Change],” Pendo said. “We feel good because water shortage is a thing of the past here now.”

The process left Pendo’s mothers group members feeling empowered to take on other, even bigger problems facing their community, which they’re already working on.

Making learning environments more comfortable and sustainable with Agents of Change — Tamil Nadu, India

An outdoor gallery hall at the local primary school where Unbound mother leader Dhanalakshmi taught was widely used by students and community members alike.

Teachers used the gallery to give student exams and to teach yoga, karate and dance classes. Unbound mothers groups held their monthly meetings there, and the general public sometimes used the space to conduct meetings. In addition, the gallery is also used by the community as a voting center and a vaccination center.

But the summer months made the gallery unbearably hot, and the space was not well lit. The school, which serves mostly the students from low-income families, often couldn’t afford to pay teachers regularly, much less make the learning space more comfortable.

Many of the mothers in Dhanalakshmi’s group never had the chance to complete their educations, but ensuring their own children have bright futures is their top concern.

“Education is essential now, everyone must know to read and write,” said Dhanalakshmi, whose own daughter has been able to gain her education with the support of sponsorship. “Every [school] should have enough lighting and ventilation that aids [children] in better learning.”

With the support of an Agents of Change grant, the mothers bought materials and hired an electrician to install 20 lights and 20 fans in the gallery, a process that took a little over a month to complete.

The initiative has brought comfort to more than 236 students attending the school along with many community groups.

“When we saw the smiles on the faces of the children once the lights and fans were installed, we confirmed that we did the right thing,” said Valarmathi, another mother who helped with the initiative.

The mothers take pride in knowing their initiative has improved the experiences of many different groups of people in the school and community. With their next Agents of Change initiative, they hope to improve sanitation and hygiene for 200 families in their community by building a communal toilet facility.

If you’d like to support a small-scale, local solution to reduce poverty in the communities where Unbound families live, learn more about Agents of Change and the initiatives you could help fund today.

Henry Flores, Oscar Tuch, Nickson Ateku, Teejay Cabrera, Danika Wolf and Erin Coleman contributed photos and information for this story.