Education Support Initiative (ESI)

Helping advance equal access and quality education for all.

Context

USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (E3) engaged Dexis to support its continued progress toward the ambitious goals of the 2011-2015 USAID Education Strategy to advance equal access and quality education for all.

Approach

The Dexis-led ESI is a rapid, cost-effective, and flexible mechanism to enable USAID/E3 to access short- and medium-term consultancies and address the breadth of technical and administrative services required to successfully design, implement, monitor, and evaluate education programs. Dexis recruits, hires, and maintains professional and operational staff providing technical leadership, research, and field support in workforce development and basic, youth, and higher education. Through ESI alone, Dexis has worked in more than 30 countries. Dexis manages 21 security-cleared long-term personnel for USAID missions and bureaus and has fielded nearly 70 short-term technical professionals on consultancies for 19 missions around the world.

Achievements

• ESI supported the development of the 2018 USAID Education Policy, as well as the accompanying Program Cycle Implementation and Operationalization Guidance.
• ESI project staff supported USAID in the development of the U.S. Government Strategy on International Basic Education FY 2019-2023.
• ESI developed a data collection tool and methodology for collecting outcome data of youth workforce development activities. This included support for the employment and earnings tool, as well as cognitive testing of the tool in the Philippines, Kenya, El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan, and Rwanda. This tool will also be used to collect data on USAID-funded youth workforce development activities globally for reporting to Congress.
• ESI helped launch the Education Cannot Wait, Global Book Alliance, and Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund.
• ESI developed the “Education Finance How-To Note” which describes how to sustainably build and finance quality education.
• Project staff developed resources to assist USAID staff and partners in generating disability prevalence data in education programming, including conceptualizing and managing an activity under the USAID Data & Evidence for Education Programs (DEEP) project to strengthen knowledge and use of tools and methods for collecting disability disaggregated data and updating the Office’s public guidance in this area.

ESI has also supported several youth-focused initiatives over the course of the project, including:

• In honor of the Global Youth Service Day in April 2018, ESI worked with USAID’s Global Development Lab and Youth Corps to host an event highlighting USAID’s leadership in engaging youth as partners in innovative and sustainable development.
• ESI assisted in the launch of new Agency-wide Youth Initiative—Global Leadership and Education Advancing Development (Global LEAD) Initiative.
• ESI also supported the COVID-19 Campaign “Youth Led Acts of Good,” youth pledging to make positive change in their communities in response to the crisis.
• The project assisted with the Second YouthLead Ambassador cohort, a group of young changemakers running organizations and youth networks that are creating PPE-like masks, hosting educational webinars on how to stay safe, and using their social media networks for “stay at home” influencer campaigns.