WHOLE CHILD ADVISORS: TRANSFORMING LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN CRISIS

What We Do

At Whole Child Advisors, we offer advisory services that bolster your long-term, systemic and transformative impact on children, families, and communities in adversity. We take an iterative approach to understand your needs, define strategic approaches, and foster your continuous improvement and learning.

Systemic change is difficult, messy, and requires patience and perseverance. We offer you guidance, support, and a long-term relationship to help you and your partners achieve your common objectives to improve life outcomes of children, families, and communities in adversity or crisis.

While we are a small team, we engage local and international partners and collaborators as required.

Our Mission

Our mission is to bolster the significant impact foundations and key organizations have on children, families, and communities in adversity or fragile contexts.

advisory Services

Strategy Development & Execution

Program Design for Systemic Impact

We will work with you to develop or revise your strategy, emphasizing sustainable impact, strategic partnerships, localization efforts, leveraging funding, or a learning and evaluation agenda.

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Programming for systemic change is complex and requires strategic partnerships, flexibility, and contextual understanding. We will facilitate/guide your program design processes, including a participatory approach to ensure local engagement.

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Implementing impactful programs often needs creative solutions and an external perspective to give guidance. Our iterative approach improves policy, practice, and impact.

We will mentor your team to overcome challenges and provide technical expertise, focusing on improving outcomes, risk management, learning, and partnerships.

Learning Communities

Evaluation and Learning

Strengthen Implementation

Creating space for learning and collaboration across partners, contexts, and types of organizations can contribute to greater impact.

We will develop and facilitate learning communities for your partners across contexts to facilitate these learning and collaboration opportunities.

Evaluation and Learning

Learning and evaluating results is critical to ensure sustainable impact, strengthen the sector by sharing the evidence, and provide inputs for future initiatives. We will support evaluating your results and impact; and integrate an iterative learning process that allows for learning and adapting programs during implementation.

Content areas of focus

Content areas where we can strengthen your impact include:

Adolescent and youth development and learning
Blended financing
Climate and education
Early childhood development
Family, school, and community engagement
Mental health and psychosocial support
Resilience
Social and emotional learning
Teacher and school leader development for holistic learning
Whole child learning for children in crisis, conflict, or fragile contexts

We engage with foundations and strategic local, national, and global stakeholders to address these core issues to strengthen their impact and transform systems.

WHY US?

We believe in the power of strategic advice and mentorship for driving sustainable social change. That’s why we are seeking a limited number of client partnerships – we want to offer you the time, expertise, and guidance you deserve. Whether you’re seeking a strategic alliance with the right partner, specific guidance for sustainable change, or a fully engaged, action-oriented partner, call us today.

Together we’ll create and refine your plan for success. Together we’ll achieve sustainable, positive learning and well-being outcomes for children and families in adversity. Let’s collaborate to make this happen.

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT AND PAST WORK

Strategy Development

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

U.S. Government Strategy for Children in Adversity, multisectoral, interagency global strategy for children, families and communities in adversity.

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Girls First Finance, blended finance initiative offering comprehensive well-being and financial support to girls at risk of exploitation for education.

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Global Center for Development of Whole Child at University of Notre Dame, system and community level engagement initially in Haiti, Colombia, Peru, Kenya, and India.

About the Founder

Dr. Ryan Burgess is the Founder and Managing Principal of Whole Child Advisors. He brings extensive experience in systems change for children in crisis working with stakeholders at local and global levels. He has an established network at different system levels across regions.

Ryan is originally from Colombia and the United States. Growing up in a family of educators, he entered education with a desire to reach those in greatest need.

In order to meet the needs of each client, Dr. Burgess brings in other collaborators as needed.

Extensive Experience

Dr. Burgess has dedicated his career to the protection, resilience, learning and development of children facing significant adversities and fragile contexts. In the past 20+ years, he collaborated with Ministries of Education, foundations, and international and local organizations to strengthen education systems from early childhood to secondary education, including technical and vocational education, in over 30 programs valued at over $1b.

Believing in the importance of understanding and working closely with those impacted by programs, Dr. Burgess has lived and worked in over 10 countries; speaks four languages; and studied several others (e.g., Serbian and Armenian) to understand the culture and language of where he worked or lived. He has experience in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe and Caucasus. Dr. Burgess has a doctorate in International Educational Development from Teachers College at Columbia University.

WHOLE CHILD ADVISORS: TRANSFORMING LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN CRISIS

What We Do

Our Mission

advisory Services

Strategy Development & Execution

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Learning Communities

Evaluation and Learning

Strengthen Implementation

Evaluation and Learning

Evaluation and Learning

Evaluation and Learning

Content areas of focus

WHY US?

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT AND PAST WORK

Strategy Development

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

About the Founder

Extensive Experience

Contact Us

Get in touch!

Global Whole Child Advisors

WHOLE CHILD ADVISORS: TRANSFORMING LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN CRISIS

What We Do

Our Mission

advisory Services

Strategy Development & Execution

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Learning Communities

Evaluation and Learning

Strengthen Implementation

Evaluation and Learning

Evaluation and Learning

Evaluation and Learning

Content areas of focus

WHY US?

EXAMPLES OF CURRENT AND PAST WORK

Strategy Development

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Strengthen Implementation

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

Program Design for Systemic Impact

About the Founder

Extensive Experience

Contact Us

Get in touch!

Global Whole Child Advisors

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