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What We Do
- WHERE WE WORK
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About Us
Welcome Message from Carol Jenkins
World Learning believes that the best hope for peace, justice, and sustainability lies in bringing people together. Through cultural immersion, experiential learning, and information sharing, our programs equip others to collaboratively address the most pressing issues of our time.
Throughout my years at World Learning, I have had the fortunate opportunity to meet with many of our participants, partners, and alumni—a global network of learners. Our programs help them understand other cultures, master new skills, and cultivate networks. Our teaching and training methodologies empower them to find locally relevant, sustainable, and implementable solutions. Our approaches emphasize flexibility and adaptability that help them tackle real-world problems.
They, in turn, make extraordinary changes in their lives and communities.
Please join us—and those we work with and serve around the world—in our pursuit to create a brighter and better future for all.
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What We Do > Our Approach
Grants Management
World Learning leads in the use of grantmaking as a development tool. We believe that even small grants can make a big difference all over the world. Grants support emerging leaders as they launch projects to improve their communities. They strengthen institutions striving to meet new goals and serve more people. But grants are more than funding—they’re real-world learning opportunities.
We have extensive experience in managing grants under USAID and other donor-funded programs. We work with individual NGOs, networks, and intermediary organizations in development sectors ranging from health and education to democracy and enterprise development. Our grants programs have total funds as large as $79 million; individual grants range from as little as $500 to as much as $3.5 million. Regardless of the level of funding provided, each successful grant was the result of World Learning’s localized, participatory, and partnership-focused approach to working with local organizations.
In that approach, we work hands-on with our partners through all stages of the process. We have developed mechanisms to select grantee organizations, and we provide them with targeted technical assistance, training, and mentoring to ensure they will be able to carry out their proposed community project. To help our partners improve their services, we also offer our custom Participatory Institutional Analysis (PIA) tool, which helps them assess their performance and develop a plan for change. Even once the grant has ended, our grantee organizations can continue to use the PIA for continuous improvement.
Through our grants management approach, our partners learn how to serve their communities by actually serving their communities. They’re learning by doing—and they continue this work on their own longer after we’re gone to become stronger and better equipped to transform their communities.
Learn more about how grants management enriches our work across our six program areas.