“It is the impact of our alumni that is most important to our mission”- Alex Beard, Director of Learning and Strategy at Teach for All
To celebrate the launch of inHive over the festive period, we hosted our first event with our new brand name, inviting experts from the field to demystify the thinking and process around prioritising alumni networks within their work in education. With wine and mince pies aplenty, our attendees came from across sectors, from education NGOs to consultancies and foundations, bringing with them a fantastic opportunity for each to connect with leaders from diverse backgrounds. With our new branding, this event is our first within our new strategy to bring together a global network of organizations engaging in community and network building for youth advancement and provide a platform for each to share and learn from one another.
With the overarching theme of discussing how networks work, our first panel explored the question of why we should make alumni network building a priority within the education space. Speaking for Teach for All, Director of Learning and Strategy, Alex Beard explained that from their perspective, teacher alumni are at the heart of their impact, with over 40,000 alumni in the network and 50-70% of whom have continued their careers in education. Teachers trained within the programme are the ones educating, becoming school leaders, developing policy and ultimately influencing educational outcomes, so it’s only natural that the organization is dedicated to building a community of alumni to understand their own impact, and continue to influence outcomes.
Likewise, Faisal Mian, Trustee of CARE Foundation, Pakistan added that in the context of the extremely low resourced communities where CARE’s schools operate, alumni are an incredible resource. For students, some of whom have to travel 1.5hours to get to school or have no idea where their next meal might come from, meeting alumni who have come from their backgrounds, and today are enterprise owners or going to medical school is incredibly inspiring. “In privileged context, we take alumni networks for granted, but in low resourced backgrounds like CARE schools in Pakistan, they are essential.”
Thinking about what makes alumni networks successful, Harriet Grigg from Camfed drew on her experience of the CAMA network, revealing that the greatest strength of the CAMA network was the fact that it is driven and led entirely by the members themselves. The leaders have built a truly inclusive governance structure, with a consistent approach to decision making that everyone buys into. Further, many of the women in the network still live in the community, and therefore are truly invested in improving it and giving back. It is this alumni-led nature of the network that makes it both so powerful and lasting, to the extent that the CAMA alumni network is in the driver’s seat of new initiatives within the schools and community, which are then used to shape Camfed’s ongoing strategy.
Adding to the conversation, Natalie Marshall, at Future First drew on her experience of working with hundreds of schools in the UK in highlighting the need for a structured and long term strategy as crucial to underpin any sustainable alumni network. She emphasised that it is essential for alumni engagement to be embedded across key stakeholders, including teachers, current students, parents and school leaders in order for the networks to be lasting and effective. Further, it is vital for schools to consistently communicate with their alumni to keep them both engaged and invested in the school and its future.
Both panels proved to be an insightful platform for sharing and learning for our attendees. Summarising the key takeaways from the panels, whilst alumni networks can prove to be an invaluable resource in supporting schools in attaining educational and developmental outcomes for their young people, they do require structure, investment and direction to run effectively and sustainably.
The overwhelming consensus of the event (and the drinks and mince pies session that ensued!) was that more opportunities and dialogue like these panels are needed for organizations that exist in this space to interact with each other.
If such an event might interest, and you’d like to join the conversation, please get in touch here and a member of the inHive team will get back to you on how you can get involved!