Following a rigorous application and selection process, SEED emerges as one of the five grantees for the Developing Effective Private Education (DEEPEN) Challenge Fund.

The DEEPEN Challenge Fund provided the Lagos LCPS-focused service providers with an opportunity to support unconventional solutions to longstanding problems in the private education sector in Lagos, through the ingenuity of private enterprise. It also provided an opportunity to fund ambitious innovations designed by Lagos’ private schools’ proprietors, service providers and other entrepreneurs. The aim was to scale up ongoing and emerging pilots, boost market linkages in hitherto unconnected market segments and highlight opportunities that might not have been noticed if not supported externally.

The concept at the heart of the Fund was ‘innovation’. The Fund team took a broad view of innovation and encouraged proposals that went beyond ‘business as usual’ and challenged applicants to find new ways to improve the performance, governance and influence of their proposed intervention in the LCPS.