Here is a story worth reflecting on. In Peru, Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) was designed to ensure that Indigenous children could learn in their languages and see their cultures represented in school. The evidence was clear: learning improves when education reflects who students are. Today, more than 1.2 million Indigenous children across 26,000+ schools are recognized as rights-holders of IBE programs (Hidalgo Collazos & Ordoñez Hidalgo, 2025). And the results show it. According to the 2014 Student Census Evaluation, a higher percentage of students in IBE schools reached the expected level in reading comprehension, but only when IBE was properly implemented, with qualified bilingual teachers, culturally relevant materials, and an intercultural pedagogical approach.
Yet this progress did not happen overnight. For decades, IBE existed only in small, isolated experiments with little state involvement. It wasn’t until the early 2010s that Peru’s Ministry of Education significantly expanded the policy, strengthening teacher training, creating new Indigenous language registries, and developing curriculum materials in 18 Indigenous languages (Hidalgo Collazos & Ordoñez Hidalgo, 2025; UNESCO, n.d.).
This journey reflects what the socio-ecological model teaches us: sustainable change happens when multiple levels, such as families, communities, institutions, government, and global actors, work in alignment (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; CDC, 2022). In Peru, Indigenous organizations, teachers, regional education offices, the Ministry of Education, and international partners such as UNESCO and the OECD each played distinct roles in supporting IBE’s expansion.
But systems change is never linear. Since 2020, Peru has faced political instability, rapid turnover in national leadership, and attempts to weaken IBE, such as proposals to remove schools from the IBE registry or eliminate Indigenous-language requirements for principals and teachers (Hidalgo Collazos & Ordoñez Hidalgo, 2025). Indigenous organizations mobilized in response, successfully pushing back against several regressive measures. Their advocacy underscores another lesson: systems change must be protected, not just initiated, and local organizations play an important role in it.
Despite challenges, powerful examples continue to emerge. In the Amazon region, the WampĂs Autonomous Territorial Government is designing its own curriculum rooted in Indigenous knowledge, supported by community elders, teachers, and local specialists. Their proposal aligns ancestral learning frameworks with Peru’s national curriculum, an illustration of local innovation shaping broader system development (Hidalgo Collazos & Ordoñez Hidalgo, 2025).
Comparable patterns can be seen beyond Peru. In Haiti, faith-based communities, schools, and funders collaborated to strengthen learning in crisis-affected regions (World Bank, 2023). UNICEF India has supported states by providing gender-responsive technical support and developing training modules to help teachers respond to diversity in classrooms and strengthen equitable learning opportunities for girls and boys (UNICEF India, 2025). Across the Caribbean, governments, philanthropic partners, and a private edtech company co-created a national digital learning strategy (IDB, n.d.). In Colombia, local NGOs, universities, schools, and government agencies worked together to influence policy and practice (World Bank, 2019).
Across these stories, whether in Peru, Haiti, India, the Caribbean, or Colombia, one insight remains constant:
Systems change emerges when local knowledge, national leadership, and global expertise move forward together.
This principle sits at the heart of Whole Child Advisors’ work: helping partners connect evidence, community priorities, and policy to support meaningful, sustained improvements in children’s learning and well-being.
So the question becomes:
In your context, where could collaboration across levels unlock the next breakthrough for children?
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development.
Debates IndĂgenas. (2025, March 1). The challenge of ensuring the right to education for Indigenous Peoples: Intercultural Bilingual Education in Peru. https://debatesindigenas.org/en/2025/03/01/the-challenge-of-ensuring-the-right-to-education-for-indigenous-peoples-intercultural-bilingual-education-in-peru/
OECD. (2019). Education Policy Outlook 2019. OECD. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-policy-outlook-2019_2b8ad56e-en.html
OECD. (n.d.). Directorate for Education and Skills. https://www.oecd.org/en/about/directorates/directorate-for-education-and-skills.html
UNESCO. (n.d.). Intercultural Bilingual Education in Peru. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000102354
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) India. (n.d.). Girls’ Education. https://www.unicef.org/india/topics/girls-education
World Bank. (n.d.-a). Haiti overview. https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/country/haiti#3
World Bank. (n.d.-b). Education in Colombia. https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/country/colombia
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (n.d.). About violence prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violence-prevention/about/index.html
UNICEF India. (2025). Education for all. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/education
UNICEF India. (2025). Children in Rajasthan. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/india/rajasthan
