Now the work starts to ensure that all children have an equal chance to pass school

Vinnova's vision with this effort is to bring civil society together towards a common objective and give them the conditions to work together instead of competing with each other, says Yusra Imsheiel, programme manager for the project.

The goal is for the actors to have the opportunity to take risks and dare to experiment together. It's about getting space to create together and getting activities to sync. To find synergies and meeting points in the common network around the school child where you can make a difference together. Therefore, Vinnova works with a so-called mission-oriented way of working.

Vinnova wants to invest in civil society's ability to create system innovation. Where we want to provide the conditions for civil society to experiment in cross-sector cooperation to create long-term sustainable solutions. By mobilizing instead of contributing to competition and fragmentation, we hope to create conditions for partnerships and long-term collaborations.

Working with societal challenges through mission work means that actors from different sectors are mobilized to jointly achieve bold and measurable objective that have a positive impact on society. These objective must be relevant to a large part of the population and must be achieved within a certain time frame.

In phase two of the initiative, a coordination team was implemented that would strengthen collaboration towards the mission. This is an important key in social innovation, where early collaboration with those who scale and spread the solution is often needed in order for it to be put to good use.

The coordination team

The coordination team includes the organizations Rädda Barnen, Generation Pep, Läxhjälpen, Friends and Idrott ut gnærs, where Hanna Sigsjö at Rädda Barnen is coordinator.

With support from Vinnova, we work together across borders to identify, test, implement and mobilize initiatives and actors with the goal that all children, regardless of conditions or growing up environment, should have an equal chance to pass school.

An objective that has great value for children, families and our entire society and that requires new methods, working methods and financing models to achieve system change. The goal is to increase the opportunities to jointly develop and strengthen efforts that meet children's different conditions and give all children an equal chance to pass school," says Hanna Sigsjö.

In the coordination team, we coordinate a portfolio of pilots and efforts that contribute to achieving the mission and develop a common impact framework. We work together to mobilize other actors from all sectors and different industries who, together with us, want to work towards the mission and contribute to more students reaching upper secondary education. Another important part is visualizing and communicating our work.

Working together as a coordination team for mission-oriented work is new for us. We test, try our way and learn how we can best be a point of contact and catalyst for actors from different sectors and industries who work together towards a mission. We also work to provide the conditions for long-term and sustained mission work that can lead to system change. A question we are currently asking ourselves is how do we know that the system has changed? For us, there is great value in getting in touch with, collaborating with and mobilizing initiatives and efforts so that more students have an equal chance to pass school and reach upper secondary school qualification," continues Hanna Sigsjö

The learning initiative "Together towards common objective" is now entering phase three, where Vinnova finances four project that take on the challenge together in a portfolio.

The portfolio

Play Together Bjuv 

In order to solve complex challenges that we face today, we also need to be able to find new innovative ways to help

I Play Together Bjuv, we therefore want to explore models for how civil society organizations and municipalities can support each other to reach more children and young people in small and resource-poor places, says Marlene Claesson, Youth 2030

Min Chans

We know through research that in order for children to pass school, good teaching with committed teachers is required, but also that students' mental and physical well-being and positive context play a big role.

At Idrott ut Gränser, we work with sports as a tool to strengthen children's well-being and self-belief, as we know that children who feel well also perform better in school, and passing primary school is the best protective factor for good future prospects. Genom Vinnovas effort, we have been given the opportunity to, in a pilot project together with three other civil society organizations based on our joint expertise and experience, test a model to give students in grades 8-9 an integrated activity program that combines physical activity, homework help and a forum with conversation exercises for psychosocial well-being, relationship building and personal development, says Julia Montelius, Sport without Borders.

Mission investment - for an equal chance to pass school

This venture meets the need to mobilize mission-oriented funding across sectors and industries

By exploring and developing a model for mission-oriented investment, we want to make long-term, sustainable capital more available for initiatives that can generate a positive measurable effect and promote long-term social impact so that all children, regardless of circumstances or upbringing conditions, have an equal chance to pass school. We will develop a model and test it in practice, we hope that it will then be able to spread and contribute to increased quality, new partnerships, a clear objective and impact focus for more and more extensive efforts that give all children an equal chance to pass school Hanna Sigsjö and Susan Stieger Petrusson, Save the Children.

Bridging the gap - Prerequisites for civil society as an actor in school

The pilot that the School Sports Association in Skåne is project managing is aimed directly at school and leisure staff, but also elected officials and management who influence school and leisure. Research shows that children's participation in association life has a positive impact on school performance. However, not all children and young people have access to association life depending on geographical, economic or social conditions. Introducing children and young people to association life via school has proven to be a good approach. On the other hand, there is a lack of sustainable structures to have a regular association activity in connection with the school that can become the bridge between school and free time.

Together with school management, administration, elected representatives, the non-profit sector and the business world, we want to create real system change linked to the view of the boundary between the school's mission and leisure activities, says Ted Åhs & Jasmine Hanab, School Sports Association.