AED is a national education coalition in Kyrgyzstan working with the vision to promote access to quality non corrupt education that contribute to sustainable development. With this project AED will help promote equal access to quality education through strengthening civil society engagement in education sector planning, policy dialogue and monitoring.

A contextual analysis of the situation in education showed that access to quality education for every child, youth and adult remains a challenge in Kyrgyzstan. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis further exacerbated this problem. It is critical that the government focusses on an education policy which addresses the challenges and work towards building back better.

To achieve this, it is important that decision-makers, local authorities, civil society, and teaching staff realize that they have a stake in this issue. This project is aimed at strengthening the role of civil society and its effective interaction with various stakeholders. It intends to strengthen the involvement of civil society in the planning of the education sector, policy dialogue and monitoring of implemented policies.

AED has been engaged in generating awareness on SDG and SDG 4 within community and policy makers and engaged in the VNR development process in 2020. The data and information of the spotlight report on SDG 4 prepared by AED was referred to by Ministry of Education and Science in VNR report. Based on the earlier accomplishments, in this proposal, AED aims to strengthen the capacities of the civil societies and policy influencers to pursue education advocacy for equitable access to quality education.

The proposal is expected to yield four main outcomes:

• AED recognized as a sustainable advocacy platform for affordable and quality education at the national and regional level.
• AED members’ capacities are increased, particularly in relation to engagement in policy dialogues
• AED actively engaged in monitoring and accountability mechanism of public education
• Lessons learnt from the Learning collaboratives strengthened AED members and civil societies It is expected that AED will increase its participation in national, regional and global policy processes and platforms advancing the issues of right to education.

The enhanced capacity of the civil society will play a key role in education budget analysis and advocacy from equity lens emphasizing differential impact of budget allocation on girls and women. It intends to raise awareness on SDG processes at all levels and engage in analyzing Program for Education Development 2040.

AED will also engage in the monitoring of the education sector plan and analyze it from a gender lens.

The following strategies will help in achieving the outcomes: Widening of membership base including the marginalized and hard to reach groups, capacity enhancement of members, building better relationship with policy makers and therefore identifying change makers, especially in Ministry of Education and Science, evidence based research, peer learning.

The activities will focus on engaging the National Government, Local authorities, community, educational organizations, teachers, parents, other civil society network and media.

The first phase of the project was implemented in 2020-2021 with support from Education Out Loud of 99.990 USD.