LEAP is a new initiative by the Jacobs Foundation and MIT Solve that brings together researchers, social entrepreneurs, and education ventures in 12-week sprints, so they can create impactful education solutions for the 21st century. Through these multistakeholder coalitions LEAP drives forward positive change in the education system by connecting and combining different perspectives and skillsets.
LEAP bridges research and practice
Structural barriers such as time constraints, access to each other, and seemingly incompatible needs can make it challenging for researchers and practitioners to work together successfully. Moreover, there are currently limited opportunities for practitioners and researchers to receive professionally managed and tailored support when jointly embarking on a project. With LEAP, we want to reduce those barriers and strengthen innovative and evidence-based education solutions.
What LEAP offers to its participants
Through participating in LEAP, individual researchers and social entrepreneurs can use their skills to support organizations that address pressing educational challenges across the globe. Education ventures gain access to tailored expertise to strengthen their organization’s operations and evidence base. MIT Solve manages and facilitates the collaboration process to ensure that participants can focus on content creation.
By collaborating with others and joining JF’s and MIT Solve’s community and networks participants get the chance to build new knowledge and partnerships, and gain recognition and visibility for their work. Outputs of these collaborations will be accessible as public goods for the broader public to learn and apply the findings to their own context. Finally, LEAP will inspire other actors in the field to connect research and practice more systematically.
How LEAP works
Education organizations (project hosts) submit their application to “win” support from a team of research and social entrepreneur LEAP fellows on a particular topic they need tailored expertise for. The project is further refined during a Design-Thinking Workshop and staffed with the most suitable experts from a pool of fellows. Fellows work on the project in a part-time function during a 12-week sprint and regularly check-in with the project host to create the final deliverable which might be in the form of a report, a framework, a research plan or some other format. LEAP fellows are individually compensated for their time, while education organizations receive a 5000 USD stipend for hosting a project.
The global call for LEAP projects and Fellows is now open for applications.
Apply to be a LEAP Fellow here: solve.mit.edu/LEAP/fellows
Apply to host a LEAP project here: solve.mit.edu/LEAP/projects
LEAP Project: solve.mit.edu/LEAP
