Strategy 2030

Learning is at the heart of what we do throughout our lives. We learn in the womb, at school, at work, and at play. In the early years, children have an enormous capacity to learn. However, the Jacobs Foundation’s three decades in child and youth development have shown us that learning systems often fail to nurture children’s full learning potential.

Our commitment

This is why, over ten years, starting in 2020, we are committing 500 million Swiss francs to advance education. We will co-create evidence-based ideas for learning. We will support schools in offering quality education and sharing best practices. We will transform education systems around the world.

We aim to support learning systems to provide young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes, tools, and equitable opportunities to reach their learning potential and thrive together. We focus on understanding early transitions between learning environments and embracing variability in learning from ages 2 to 12.

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To foster learning across diverse contexts around the world, we are building on our four core competences:

Evidence Generator and Translator

We fund world-class research into child learning and development, with practical impact on policy and practice.

Partnership Innovator

We ignite multi-stakeholder coalitions between governments, industry, schools, and social purpose organizations to jointly scale up effective education policies and practices.

Policy Entrepreneur

We support policy innovation by facilitating access to knowledge, data, and tools, to promote learning and practice improvement, instigate change, and inspire leadership approaches to strengthen the entire learning system.

Catalytic Investor

We use innovative financial instruments to create positive impact at scale and enable third party investments that otherwise would not be possible.

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We embrace a culture of learning within the Foundation. We proactively share what we learn to inspire transformation in systems beyond our direct reach.

Our portfolios are structured along three linked dimensions of learning that form the bedrock of our 2030 strategy: Learning Minds, Learning Schools, and Learning Societies.