Blog
Jan 10

Funding opportunity: SCE Digital Learning Challenge

This month, the Susan Crown Exchange (SCE) is seeking afterschool program partners to join its Digital Learning Challenge. Selected programs will receive awards of up to $100,000 to support their work developing teens’ 21st century skills using digital media. Awardees will participate in a two-year learning community that will “explore how digital media can promote the development of skills to prepare the next generation for success.”

What is the Digital Learning Challenge?

Over the next two years, the Digital Learning Challenge will bring together the selected afterschool programs, an evaluation team, human resource professionals, and digital product developers and distributors to “explore what it means to be a prepared and skilled 21st century citizen.” The learning community “will unpack the practices and programs of top afterschool organizations that support teens as they build, produce, and remix media, and how these activities connect to opportunities and obstacles faced beyond the program.”

The goal of the initiative is to engage youth in more meaningful learning experiences. Through this work with afterschool programs, SCE hopes to analyze and articulate best practices to share with educators, informal learning practitioners, and others with a stake in using digital tools.

To participate, afterschool programs will need to make a two-year commitment, including three in-person convenings and three online meetings between June 2017 and September 2018. SCE will cover all travel and convening expenses related to participation.

Who is eligible to apply?

The Digital Learning Challenge will bring together digital media programs of any size, shape, or location. The intent of the initiative is to study how the work is done—in differing contexts, with different sets of roadblocks—and how success was achieved navigating all of these factors.

To be eligible, afterschool organizations must serve youth ages 13-18, incorporate digital media into programming, identify 21st century growth using digital media as a program outcome, and demonstrate some evidence of impact. Additionally, organizations must have 501(c)(3) status.

Apply now!

Applications for the Challenge are now open. Click here to learn more about the Challenge and apply by January 20, 2017. For more information on the initiative, visit SCE’s Digital Learning Challenge webpage.