The meeting opened with the governments of Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden announcing a total of US$40 million in new funding for GPE's COVID-19 response fund. GPE is on track for a record year, with US$1.5 billion in grant approvals and close to $1 billion in disbursements by the end of 2020.
At the virtual meeting, which was hosted by the government of Germany, the Board approved GPE's new five-year strategic plan to drive progress in transforming education and delivering impact at scale. The new strategy includes a strong commitment to drive forward progress on gender equality through all of GPE's work, including by creating a new funding window of up to $250 million to help countries unblock bottlenecks to gender equality, particularly to girls' education.
The Board also approved an innovative new operating model designed to strengthen GPE's ability to support countries to transform their education systems; and a suite of new innovative financing initiatives including matching funds and debt forgiveness mechanisms, to build on the successful GPE Multiplier
Amid the unprecedented challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, GPE’s ambitious new strategy will give partner countries greater flexibility to protect and drive progress in delivering quality education to all girls and boys, starting with those most at risk of being left behind.
Corrigendum: An earlier version of this announcement stated that the majority of the US$40 million in donor funding went to the COVID-19 fund. In fact, the full amount is for the COVID-19 fund.