IEFG BIG Series: The places you will go - Working together across portfolios

How often do you engage with colleagues across different portfolios? Have you ever considered how your Education and Climate portfolios could collaborate to generate shared impact? Many don’t, but this episode invites you to start that conversation.

In this compelling new episode, hosted by Kevin Marinacci, CEO of the Fabretto Children’s Foundation, we bring together key voices from IEFG members Porticus and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), to explore the practical realities of cross-portfolio collaboration. What are the barriers? What’s needed to spark meaningful cooperation? And what does a successful future of integrated strategy look like?

From CIFF:

• Eunice Ogolo, Director, Girl Capital – Africa
• Terri Wills, Climate Director

Sharing insights on the opportunities and challenges of bridging climate and education priorities.

From Porticus:

• Luis Felipe Serrao, Senior Programme Manager, Education
• Daniela Prioli, Senior Programme Manager, Climate

Discussing why collaboration between education and climate portfolios matters, and how a bold shared vision can shape the future.

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Transcript

Yasmein: Welcome back to the Brains in Gear podcast  series by the International Education Funders Group, exploring the intersection of education philanthropy and the climate crisis. In this episode, we examine how corporate and multi-portfolio philanthropic organizations, that often managing education and climate as distinct priorities  can unlock greater impact by aligning these efforts, especially in countries most affected by climate change. Today, we managed to bring together—for the first time ever—leaders from separate portfolios within multi-portfolio philanthropic organizations to discuss the barriers and opportunities  to cross-portfolio collaboration.  Our guest host for today’s conversation is Kevin Marinacci, CEO of Fabretto.

Kevin: Hello. Welcome back to the big series on education philanthropy, and the Climate Crisis. I'm Kevin Marinacci from Fabretto Children's Foundation, the guest host for this episode. I'm delighted to be a part of this important big series. We are eager to learn from our colleagues at IEFG, their experiences, and I'm sure it will help inform all of our work, including our work with youth in agriculture and value chains such as coffee and cacao. In earlier episodes, we heard from corporate and multi portfolio philanthropic organizations, the separate education and climate portfolio. They highlighted the need to move beyond treating these as separate, recognizing the value of aligning them to better serve countries hit hardest by the climate crisis. This episode looks more closely at cross portfolio collaboration, how it's working in philanthropy and what success looks like. The barriers that remain. We'll also examine the potential for deeper collaboration, not only across internal portfolios, but between the businesses and the foundations attached to them.

Today I'm joined by Eunice Ogolo, Director, Girl Capital – Africa - Children’s Investment Fund Foundation 

Eunice: Thank you, Kevin. 

Kevin: Terry Wills Climate Director, children's Investment Fund Foundation. 

Terry: Lovely to be here. Thanks, Kevin. 

Kevin: Luis Felipe from Porticus.

Luis:  Thank you very much. Happy to be here. 

Kevin: Daniela  Prioli, Senior Programme Manager at Porticus

Daniela: Thank you so much for having us, Kevin. 

Kevin: Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you all in today's episode. In recent years education philanthropy had made progress in addressing cross-cutting issues. Gender, for example, is widely integrated into education strategies, but despite climate changes growing impact on education systems, integration of climate considerations has lagged behind collaboration between education and climate portfolios remains limited. And often lacks the strategic depth required before exploring the barriers. Let's first consider why this collaboration is so important. I'd like to post this first question to you in this Eunice. We can start by drawing from your experience working at CIFF. Why do you think cross portfolio collaboration matters?

Eunice: Thank you, Kevin. Indeed, cross portfolio collaboration is critical in the development sector. You know, one of the things that I've come to understand and appreciate as a development leader is that the challenges that we are seeking to solve really show up as isolated issues. More often than not, they are part of a complex web of interconnected drivers as an organizatio CUFF seeks to transform the lives of children and adolescents and ensure that they survive and thrive today and in future. Now, this cannot be approached as a single issue, but as a portfolio of interconnected investment. Take today's topic, for example, education and climate are deeply intertwined. On the one hand, education equips individuals and communities with the knowledge, skills, and agency to respond to climate challenges. Think about teaching climate smart agriculture, proper waste management, or environmental stewardship. These are all areas where education plays a critical role and the impact goes further than that. You know, we do know that one extra year of schooling can increase future earnings by up to 20%, and that economic boost means that households are better equipped to cope with climate shocks, whether that drought, flood, or rising food prices. But on the other hand, climate change also directly affects education outcomes. Extreme weather events disrupt schooling, displacement, pr families, and health issues related to climate can keep children out of class. So when we bring together education and climate, we unlock powerful synergies. Imagine this. Climate education in schools can be used to empower young people to become informed advocates and sustainability innovators. Green school, infra infrastructure can reduce emissions. While creating healthier learning environment and resilient education systems ensure continuity of learning even in the face of climate disruptions.

And this is the kind of integrated thinking that we embrace at safe. Thank you. 

Kevin: Thank you Eunice for your insights. Terry. Building upon her points, can philanthropic. Organizations operate across multiple portfolios, truly achieve their mission without intentional collaboration between these areas. And similarly, when it comes to corporate philanthropy, do you believe there's a greater need for alignment and collaboration with business?

Terry: Yeah. Thanks Kevin. Great question. I, we really believe that intentional collaboration is key to achieving our goals. CIFF began working on climate. I guess it was over about a decade ago when our founder, sir Chris Hohn, realized that our children's programs wouldn't succeed without a safe and healthy climate. And as Eunice was talking about, the impacts of climate change are being felt all around the world and they disproportionately impact marginalized. And frontline community. So although we're a children's foundation, our climate programs have grown and the portfolio now makes up just under 50% of our work. And this underscores the point that a safe climate is essential to ensuring a world where all children can thrive. And increasingly, we're driving much more intentional intersection in a few key areas and agree that this is essential for success. These areas include resilience. So understanding how community and infrastructure resilience can protect mitigation efforts and also enhance development. The other area is gender and equity, so applying a gender and equity lens across our whole portfolio helps us to find the synergies such as supporting women through extreme heat waves, through passive cooling, but also parametric insurance. And then another area is around development finance. In many emerging markets and developing economies, we're seeing that there's less of a distinction between climate mitigation, climate resilience, and development. We've established a cross cutting development finance. Function now to work across all of CIFF, recognizing that issues like sovereign debt fundamentally impact all of our portfolio. I think just turning to your second point around business and the need for greater collaboration and alignment, definitely agree with this and this is something that.

CIFF has been doing a lot of, and, and continuing to, even in an environment where we're plagued with green hushing and greenwashing, the right policy signals combined with strong accountability can unlock serious momentum. So there's a few areas that we're working on this and, and one of them is buildings. So as part of a new initiative called Assemble, we're working with 80 Green building councils, which around the world, which forged consensus across the building and construction value chain. And then they present recommended regulations to governments. Also in aviation, we stood up as CEO Alliance called Project Sky Power, which brings together airline sustainable aviation, fuel producers and investors to work with the European Commission.

So these are some examples of how. Business coalitions can support sectoral regulation, and when they're structured right, they create a virtuous cycle de-risking investment, aligning incentives and fostering collaboration. 

Kevin: Thank you, Terry, for sharing that. Luis, do you believe that philanthropy by not proactively fostering cross portfolio collaboration or by under investing in the integration of interconnected areas, maybe undermining their capacity as funders to catalyze scalable and systemic change. 

Luis: Great. Well that, that's a great starting point for us. First of all, I want to say that collaboration matters, right?  not only because when done in a sensitive and careful way, it makes philanthropic efforts more effective by reducing information, asymmetries, uh, establishing more accurate diagnosis, and also contributing to the, the understanding of potential Solutions to complex problems, but also because it's the right thing to do. And since promoting social justice and reparation and equity demands a collective effort, so collaboration is key to success. At least from my experience. A collaboration is key to success. And so, for instance, we can talk, we cannot Talk about whole child development in, uh, in the education sector without discussing climate or nature or access to land, to portable water. So I think everything is interconnected when, when we are talking about one specific topic. And collaborations is something that unlocks different angles, different point of views, and also makes our work more effective because when we understand better, a specific situation. Then when we, when collective intelligence to, to map potential solutions, I think it's a win-win conversation to everyone.

Kevin:  Thank you, Luis, for sharing that. Daniella, in your role leading climate initiatives within a multi portfolio philanthropic organization, what key gaps have you identified when climate related work is pursued in isolation? For example, without strategic alignment with the education portfolio.

Daniela:  Okay. I would love you to start by pointing out, that climate crisis should not be seen in isolation, um, as only an environmental issue. So it's important to understand it, see, and to approach it as a human crisis that affects all dimensions of society, including education. Of course it is. Also affected by it. Without this strategic alignment with education, the climate work misses its capacity of lasting change. We miss the chance to equip youth with the values and with the, the, the skills and the knowledge that they need for this deep systemic shifts in behavior, any governance. That we need to see in the next years. So when, when youth is out of the equation, so climate efforts become short term, top down and unsustainable. And on the adaptation side, there's, there's really a risk of overlooking. This schools and education systems as this hub of resilience and innovation and hope to empower these young people to lead through some quite green future scenarios of climate crisis, especially in regions like Amazon Basing and Congo Basin and other forest rich territories where the stakes are really existential.

Kevin: Thank You, Daniela, and thanks to everyone cross portfolio collaboration is indeed important. It remains notably limited. Given your experience working across education and climate portfolios, what do you see as the key barriers to this collaboration? Why might there be a hesitation or difficulty in fostering stronger cross portfolio collaboration? Terry, what are the primary barriers that limit effective collaboration across portfolios within philanthropic organizations? 

Terry: Yeah, it's a great question, Kevin. I mean, one of the biggest challenges we see in philanthropy, especially when we're trying to work across different portfolios. Climate and education is that sometimes structurally teams are built around specific themes with our own goals, our own budgets, ways of working, and it can take a lot of time to navigate. We at CIFF are particularly very passionate about achieving results as soon as possible, so we don't always take a step back and maybe carve out the time to explore other areas and approaches. We find when you're trying to tackle something complex, like how climate change affects education outcomes, you need people when we're comfortable zooming out, asking messy questions and working in the gray and carving out time to do that. So people want to work together, but in practice it's hard to find dedicated time. So at c actually, we've taken a new approach, uh, recently, which we're finding is starting to make a real difference. So each area of. CIF has developed key missions and these missions articulate key goals across 14 missions, which provide all of us with more of a framework for collaboration. These missions help us understand what goals and outcomes colleagues are working towards and how they're approaching these goals, which gives us. A bit of a lingua franca across sif. So what more can we do is organizations. We can also create intentional spaces for cross portfolio work and celebrate the connectors. This involves shifting mindsets and taking a step back to look at the big picture. 

KevinL Thanks, Terry. That's wonderful to hear those initiatives. Eunice, could a lack of prioritization by senior leadership and a lack of board engagement be a contributing factor to the limited cross portfolio collaboration within philanthropy?

Eunice: Thank you, Kevin. Absolutely. The tone is set at the top, and leadership plays a pivotal role in enabling or limiting cross portfolio collaboration. When senior leaders and boards don't prioritize collaboration it, it often doesn't happen, and that's because meaningful collaboration requires time, as Terry was alluding to. There takes a lot of time to bring it together. It requires energy and financial investment, and without leadership backing, these resources are hard to mobilize. But that said, I do think we are seeing a lot of shifts and there is growing recognition among leaders, certainly at cif. Again, as Terry was giving examples there, and among our partners of the value in connecting portfolios like climate and education. This understanding is there and the intent is, is increasingly visible. But for me, I think the real challenge lies in how we deliver on that intent. And Terry did highlight some of the challenges and, and, you know, the barriers to collaboration, but it's just, it's not about alignment at the top. It's really about creating practical and making collaboration work on the ground, and I think we need to ask ourselves what structures and incentives actually encourage teams to work across silos. How do we make it easier or harder for people to collaborate? I believe we should invest in simple, effective structures that support cross portfolio collaboration, and we need to spend more time reflecting on how to design systems, where the incentives align so that collaboration is not just encouraged, but is something that is a way of working in organizations.

Kevin: Thanks Eunice for sharing those insights. Luis, in the context of working within the education portfolio of a multi portfolio foundation, to what extent might internal dynamics, such as a strong sense of ownership or limited confidence in the expertise of other portfolios impede cross portfolio collaboration?

Luis: Good question. That's a great question. Again, lemme think because, um. I don't think it's, it's a problem, uh, at the individual level sometimes I do think that people have been students, they have been surrounded by teachers, they are exposed to school premises. I think education is everywhere, so I don't think it's a lack of ownership or something very individualistic preventing someone, um, to seek collaboration. Sometimes from my experience, a collaboration's often not hindered a by a lack of ownership or trust. But sometimes by structural factors, for instance, the frameworks talking about portfolios or sectors, that's something that is structurally prevents us operating. So we have a highly specialized or very focused portfolios limiting collaboration. So I need to do location, uh, that's my, my field of expertise. I need to deliver some KPIs, some milestones. And then from a a structural perspective, we are not incent uh, incentivized. We are not encouraged to collaborate. So the, when the agendas are very rigid, there is little room for spotting our emerging opportunity or fostering innovation or You know, seeking opportunities for collaboration and I think it comes from within, comes from from institutional protocols that could foster and nurture more collaboration and adding to that, I think sometimes there is often simply not enough time or capacity. For meaningful collaboration. We are very, especially in the philanthropic sector, I see that we are very strategy in term of human resources. We are short staffed sometimes, and when we have to prioritize, we prioritize not collaborating because it takes time, it takes a lot of effort to produce something new. And that's some of the factors that I see, from my experience a lot of colleagues internally are keen to participate, but there are so, so many barriers to that collaboration that we stick to the basics rather than fighting the system to make collaboration to happen. So I think that's, that's my view on that. It's not about individuals. It could be also part of protocols and that could nurture a little bit more of ownership and, and encourage people to seek others for different angles for different opportunities. 

Kevin: Thank you, Luis. Daniela does under investment in coordination infrastructure such as dedicated resources for joint learning, strategic alignment, and facilitation. Contribute to the challenges of cross portfolio collaboration. 

Daniela: Thank you, Kevin. Definitely non prioritization or limited investment in coordination infrastructure within organizations is definitely a major barrier for cross portfolio collaboration. Both, I mean both within foundations and even more so across philanthropic organization. Which is their final goal, right? And when we talk about coordination infrastructure, we should not refer mely to events or occasional meetings. One-offs. We should aim for dedicated staff time. It's institutional capacity to enable continuous learning, strategic coherence, and collaborative facilitation across teams and partners When these resources are missing, collaboration tends to remain in this informal stage, relying solely on individual relationships. And they're goodwill really. So it seems a nice to have rather than something embedded in institutional strategy in core objectives. And this approach might carry us for a, for a while, but it doesn't build the kind of systemic long-lasting solutions that we need for climate at porticus. Our mission or, or uh, institutional mission is to contribute to adjust and sustainable future where human dignity flourishes. So for us to live up to this mission, we are more and more embedding collaboration into the very fabric of how we do things, how we work, making this a way of doing things and not an afterthought. So working in this strengthening coordination infras infrastructure is not for us now only about improving internal efficiency, but it's more about unlocking the, the collective potential of the networks to drive this meaningful messaging change that we.

Kevin: Thanks, Daniela. Thanks Luis, Terry and Eunice for sharing your thoughts on that segment. Given that both CIF and Portus may have already have engaged on cross portfolio collaboration, I'd like to invite each organization to share its perspective. What does successful cross collaboration between education and climate look like? Whether it's based on past experience or future vision. Your insights would be very valuable. 

Eunice: Thank you, Kevin. Cross portfolio coordination is something that we have seen work in, in practice at Safe, particularly in education and, and climate. I will give some practical examples from our portfolio, and I wanted to start by giving an example of the work that we do with Comfort. That's a campaign for female education and that's one of our strategic flagship, uh, partners for girls education across the continent. Comfort provides comprehensive support to keep girls in school across six African countries, and with safes partnership, we've embedded climate education into their programs. Last year in collaboration with the Ministries of Education in Zambia and Zimbabwe Comfort launched an in-school climate education initiative that is led by young, young women graduates. So these are young women who are already graduating in school and waiting to transition to higher learning or to to jobs, but do come back to support this in-school climate education initiative. It compliments the national curriculum and equips students, especially marginalized girls, with the knowledge and skills to build climate resilience and pursue green careers. It's practical, it's locally relevant, and it's led by youth. And the program covers things such as understanding the courses, the impact of climate change, and being able to spot myths and misconceptions. It also looks as issues such as evaluating risks and staying safer in extreme climate events. But it also looks at what it means to be climate resilient and empowers young people to adapt to the effects of climate change. So these are some of the work that we are doing. And also comfort in their transition from secondary education into tertiary education or livelihoods have something they call agriculture guides in which they really focus on climate smart agriculture. Supporting communities to engage in climate smart agriculture, to improve food security, but also as a way of raising livelihoods for their own, for their own families. And some of the future vision that we have at Safe Africa include working on green energy transition, particularly clean cooking in schools and leveraging government school free feeding programs. Governments across Africa are rolling out school feeding programs, but some of the schools still use energy that is no clean. And so safe is looking in future to work with such cool schools to transition into. Clean cooking as a way of contributing to to climate outcomes. 

Terry: Yeah, and I think just building on what Eunice was saying, it's so interesting just hearing Eunice talk through some of the areas in, in her portfolio, and it really resonates with areas in my portfolio and makes me think, wait, we need to collaborate even more than we do already. But I think one of the areas is around cooling, for example. So I work a lot with partners all around the world and cooling and making sure that we're transitioning to. Coolants that don't make climate, uh, warming even even greater. But also we look at areas like passive cooling. So when we don't have access to a lot of energy or technologies that, you know, we can introduce green spaces and nature and, and that will in turn. Support educational outcomes in different parts of the world. I mean, here in Europe we've just experienced unprecedented heat waves, which, which I know are nothing compared to what some of these emerging markets and developing economies experience, but we've seen schools across France. Closing, uh, and other impacts. And even here in, in London, my children were kept inside during, during the heat wave. And so we need to be doing more together to improve access to cooling, making sure that the coolants and, and the cooling technologies don't make global heating worse, and then improve educational outcomes. All in the round. And, but the other area is also on green schools that Eunice you were talking about. And the clean cooking. And this is so important as well, but we're seeing that from, from combustion in cooking in many countries around the world, it's contributing to black carbon and black carbon is a super pollutant. And then in turn, super pollutants can actually. Contribute almost as much as two does to, to global heating. So we really need to reduce these emissions. Uh, and also it affects air quality that, you know, we know that that children are, children breathe faster than adults, and so they actually take in more dirty air. So early exposure to air pollution can have lifelong effects of a child's life. Stunted growth, asthma, behavior problems, anxiety and depression. And we're working with partners such as the Clean Air Fund to really understand this. Develop regulations, community-based action that can really support cleaner air, which can then in turn support educational outcomes. You can see there's a lot of intersections amongst our portfolios here at ciff. 

Daniela: Thank you so much, uni and Terry for, for giving this. Snapshot from sipps, uh, perspective, I would say specifically from, from the political side is specifically from managing the forest portfolio, but also as an a biologist working, uh, with traditional livelihoods for a long time. I see collaboration between education and climate as one where education is recognized as a pillar for climate resilience. And territorial governance and autonomy, especially in, in the Amazon basing that are based on the current threat from illegal economies driving deforestation, but also violence and security on the ground in territories like this. Educations. Education plays a role in strengthening the social fabric and local governance structures, maintaining the, the indigenous children connected to their territories, but also offering the, the opportunities, the economic opportunities for communities to resist this destructive pressures in their territory. So it includes entrepreneurial education, equips young people with the tools to foster localized solutions in generate income while keeping the forest ending. It includes thematic education on topics like carbon markets. That, that is really overwhelming. Communities nowadays in the Amazon basing political advocacy and territorial rights, all of that is crucial for climate and it, it has a very strong education component. So in my vision, climate and education portfolios work really hand in hand to, to bu the solutions, these initiatives that are, should be environmentally sound of course, but it's above all it should be socially. Culturally, economically rooted in these realities of local communities and centered in local agency.

Luis: to Daniella's point from my perspective as a philanthropic operator  a key, a key success, a, a key, uh, achievement for me to connect better education and climate is when we have coordinated approach to philanthropy, to grant making. That's, that's the basics, that's the baseline for me. Uh, and it's also, uh, an evidence of success when we do try proactively trying to coordinate our efforts and we are able to support a wider landscape of partners in a very sensitive, contextualized way and culturally. Recognizing trends, acknowledging local demands, but also supporting, uh, local actors, especially frontline actors, to, to, and to raise the standards of public debate. To raise the standards of not to fight for better public services as the school offer, and in my perspectives is one key, success is the coordination, more coordination between investments and its theories and its assumptions. Another thing. Is when we are able to, to break or to build bridges between sectors. So when, uh, partners start to collaborate between themselves, not only about the operators of philanthropy trying to do something. Together is also when partners from different segments, from different perspectives, um, uh, could collaborate between it themselves. For instance, there is no way to discuss indigenous education in the Amazon, in Brazil without discussing access to land, access to clean water, access to, to, to basic rights. Protecting the forest is protecting basic rights of the, the nature, but also for the people that protected the nature. So they're intertwined somehow. And when we are able to promote collaboration between partners, between grantee partners, it's even more. It's, it's another example of success in terms of collaboration. 

Kevin: Thank you all for your valuable contributions. Before we conclude, I'd like to invite each of you to share one concrete action or recommendation.You would offer other philanthropies considering collaboration across education and climate portfolio. I think may maybe Terry can start.

Terry: something that just really resonated with me in the previous conversation was, was around how we, we can link up the bottom up to the systemic. I think a lot in climate change and in across our portfolio we work at a broad systems level. We're talking about. Big policy changes, big shifts in, in corporate action across sectors, and we don't always maybe look to the very specific examples on the ground. Just hearing from, from Eunice and Daniella about, you know, some of the impacts on the ground, it can really help us to think about. Those systemic changes in a different way from, from really seeing those very specific examples on the ground and how we can make an impact there as well. So that really resonated with me and maybe a recommendation to really link that bottom up in the systemic. 

Euince: Thank you, Terry. I agree with Terry that making this as practical as possible on the ground is critical. And for me, my advice would be that philanthropists should first start by identifying their shared outcome. That they really want to rally around. You know, whether that's around building climate resilience in vulnerable communities, whether that's improving learning outcomes through green infrastructure, or having a common goal that creates, or just having a common goal that creates alignment and and purpose. And then I think once we have a common goal, then really investing in simple, flexible mechanisms that make collaboration easy. Sometimes we overthink it and as stereo saying, sometimes we elevate it. Too high that it doesn't become practical, but really having mechanisms that work on the ground and that bring organizations together. You know, whether that's come joint planning sessions or even co-funding pilot projects, just to, to test and see how those. Goals, they do not have to be complex, but really something that is simple and practical and very intentional. And then just embedding, you know, the culture of collaboration across the organization and making it something that we live every day. And again, as Terry was was saying earlier, I think even just within organizations themselves, so the reflections for us. Even as safe, could we better collaborate?  I think before we even talk about collaboration across different philanthropic organizations, I believe there is, um, a lot of opportunities for philanthropies to check within, you know, and their portfolios and see how they collaborate across education and climate as we've been discussing today. But thank you so much. It's been an exciting conversation. I'm very pleased to have been part of it. So grateful for that. Thank you. 

Daniela: Thank you, Terry and eunice., it's really lovely to hear I must second both of you on the importance of having solutions bottom up, very rooted in territorial needs, territorial priorities and community drives, and that coordination is key. Coordination within organization is key and make it as simple as possible. I love that. Thank you. Very nice. Because we don't have to have very complex structures. We just have to have time and capacity from the team because you see that most of the, uh, professionals working in this space really value this collaboration, really see their reaching exp enriching experience that comes from this exchange. So I would definitely suggest us to, to look at this portfolio collaboration as a key driver. Of this long lasting solution that we look for and that we see education in the climate work specifically to treat education as core, not, uh, peripheral, really to integrate education for, for this. Inclusive solutions. 

Luis: One of the things I would recommend for us to foster more collaboration between climate, nature and education sector is to listen more, to be more curious and, and less judgmental Sometimes. I'm paraphrasing, uh, a colleague here, uh, from porticus, so being curious, being a good listener, but also trying to concentrate our tension. On the human being, the front line and the concrete one. Uh, not only, uh, a generic one and sometimes the education sector using some terminologies, some conceptualization such as the student. It seems that all students are the same and, but they're not. And when we are talking about education and climate, it matters. Who is the student? We are talking. And, and having, uh, concentrating our efforts to understand the basic needs of a specific student and how these student, their family, their community are related to, to climate. I don't know, extreme climate events or their, uh, the, or their existence is related to specific. Way of producing I don't know, goods and, and food systems is gonna, their existence is connected to a food system that's also discussing education and climate. So the school meals is something very important. Sometimes we don't pay closer attention to school meals. There is a huge program in Brazil and in Kenya State maintained programs that could be part of the education portfolio as well. Not only about the climate or the nature or the agriculture portfolio from other foundations, and I think there are some bridges. There is no wrong answer. When we focus our effort on the human being that we are trying to work with and trying to support under dignity. And I think that would be my advice. Paying closer attention, listening more, and trying to find ways, clever ways to connect us on the ground because people on the ground, on the front line know what is the answer. Know that education and climate are not separate things, and listening to them is also an exercise that could exercise for us.

Yasmein: We hope you enjoyed the episode. In this conversation, we brought together, for the first time, leaders from separate portfolios within multi-portfolio philanthropic organizations to discuss not only  the barriers to cross-portfolio collaboration, but what meaningful success could look like, and their vision for working more strategically across education and climate. Our speakers made it clear that, true cross-portfolio collaboration goes far beyond occasional meetings or joint events. It requires dedicated staff time, institutional commitment, and the capacity to support continuous learning, strategic coherence, and collaborative processes across teams. They emphasized the need for supportive frameworks, engaged boards, and leadership at the executive level to sustain this work. We also heard inspiring real-world examples, such as the Comfort Project, which is advancing girls' education across six African countries while successfully integrating climate education into its programming, demonstrating what’s possible when portfolios are aligned around a common mission. Throughout the episode, our speakers stressed that effective collaboration begins with identifying shared outcomes and ensuring internal coordination. While this doesn’t require overly complex structures, it does demand focused time, capacity, and a willingness to work across traditional boundaries. Cross-portfolio collaboration should be seen not as an optional exercise, but as a key driver of the long-term solutions that philanthropy is seeking. Once again, this episode reinforces a critical message: philanthropy will not achieve lasting impact if it continues to work in silos, whether within foundations or in partnership with others.

This podcast is produced by the International Education Funders Group (IEFG). It was curated and edited by Yasmein Abdelghany, with post-production by Sara Myles. To learn more about IEFG, please visit www.iefg.org, and subscribe to the podcast for further conversations on education philanthropy and the climate crisis.