Back to the home pageIn 2025, KSP, ECM, and KNIF operated at different scales and in different contexts. But across all three, the same pattern emerged: the five shifts are not a narrative. They are happening. And the data show each one moving TNF's investment in educators, foundational learning, and pathways to opportunity from work TNF delivers to projects sustained directly by communities, partners, and institutions.
Here is the evidence:
Deepening Impact
The most significant evidence demonstrating deepened impact came from KSP's direct implementation and ECM-funded interventions through small grants across East and Central Africa. Together, the two portfolios addressed a range of barriers to quality learning, from psychosocial support and literacy development to digital skills, accessible learning, and youth employability. The insights show that these interventions produced measurable, observable change in learners, educators, and communities.
Matric pass rates achieved across three partner secondary schools
School enrolment shift in Tanzanian pastoralist community (OMOM Maasai)
Higher learning institution registration rate among Grade 12 learners
Value in educational funding unlocked via NSFAS support
Educators equipped to strengthen classroom teaching practice
Displaced youth equipped with employable skills
Shifting Ownership
Across the KSP, ECM, and KNIF model designs and implementation, 2025 produced a consistent and measurable pattern towards a fundamental shift in who leads, decides, and sustains. This section documents where agency transferred and what it produced through schools sustaining practices, partners co-leading with TNF, and the adoption of grant-making principles grounded in trust.
Absorbed 3 ICT learning centres, 4 coding and robotics labs, and trained project staff: permanent school-owned infrastructure and human resources.
School hall standing tall at Eqinisweni Secondary School, serving 2 550 learners and 85 educators in 2025.
Learners at Willow Crescent Secondary School accessing coding and robotics as a formally integrated curriculum subject.
Regional Leadership Centre East Africa (RLC-EA) delivered ECM Cohort 2 after USAID exit – 63 participants trained across 13 countries.
Scaling What Works
TNF's approach to scale is grounded in a simple belief: the people closest to the challenges are best placed to solve them. Through KNIF and ECM, TNF is investing in organisations and leaders already working in their communities, backing solutions in teacher development, foundational learning, and youth pathways where small, well-placed investments promise to go far. This is TNF's intentional move from direct implementer to ecosystem enabler. What follows is evidence that this approach is working.
ECM alumni network across 28 countries generating peer collaboration independently.
In seed funding disbursed to ECM participants with innovative solutions.
Global visibility and influence on trust-based philanthropy on 3 global and continental platforms.
Over R50 million in flexible, trust-based funding committed to 14 South African organisations, enabling locally-led innovation through the Khulani Nathi Innovation Fund.
Quality & Consistent Learner Outcomes
Matric pass rates of 100%, 95.7%, and 88.5% were not achieved in a single year. They accumulated across six years of sustained partnership – leadership development, psychosocial support, literacy, digital skills, and showing up consistently. The same result across three different schools is not a coincidence. It demonstrates what sustained investment produces.
Accessing Post-School Opportunities
The 2025 Grade 12 cohort was the largest supported through the Gradesmatch Bridge App to date, reaching 399 learners across three schools. A total of 113 learners successfully enrolled in higher learning institutions, while NSFAS funding support unlocked over R6 million in educational value.
Program Evolution Learning
Data also reveals a persistent aspiration gap, as many learners aspire towards highly competitive university pathways without having received early enough exposure to career guidance and pathway planning. This insight has become one of the programme's most important learnings and directly informs future programme design.
Interventions became a school-wide priority
Across KSP's psychosocial, literacy, leadership, and digital skills interventions, the evidence points to the same outcome: schools internalised these programmes and made them their own. Learner participation in psychosocial support increased from just 3 learners in 2024 to 336 in 2025, while educator engagement expanded across every support offering. Schools are increasingly identifying challenges earlier, referring learners for support, and creating safer environments for both learners and educators to seek help.
Reading culture is extending beyond the classroom into homes and communities, engaging 70 caregivers and households, and demonstrating that literacy development is increasingly becoming a shared responsibility rather than a school-only activity. Leadership is becoming embedded through the Values-Based Leadership Programme, where three secondary schools are increasingly taking ownership of leadership activities, with learner leaders playing a greater role in shaping school culture, accountability, and peer support.
Investments that became school-owned assets
Within the KSP programme portfolio, TNF invested in schools’ infrastructure and skills capacity. In 2025, these investments became permanent, school-owned assets: three fully operational ICT learning centres, four coding and robotics labs, and one 1 044-square-metre school hall seating 300 people.
The strongest signal of ownership is not the infrastructure itself, but that schools are actively maintaining, protecting, and maximising the use of these assets. Digital learning is becoming part of everyday learning as more than 4 800 learners access tech-enabled learning. At Eqinisweni Secondary, the school hall provides a safe space for over 2 550 learners and 85 educators for conducive learning, collaboration, and belonging.
Sustained Asset Utilization
In 2025, evidence from our schools and partners showed that when projects and funding cycles end, ownership becomes evident through deliberate decisions to retain and embed what worked.
After the Khula Funda cycle that supported 7 schools in Braamfischerville ended, 3 schools absorbed former Story Sparkers as permanent, school-funded staff, with one independently training 20 Early Childhood Development (ECD) staff to establish reading corners, DEAR periods, and self-sustaining reading clubs. Literacy practice moved from a TNF-delivered programme to a school-owned and community-sustained activity.
Over 200 Grade 8 learners at Willow Crescent Secondary accessed coding and robotics for the first time as a formally integrated curriculum subject – a school-led decision to move the programme from an after-school intervention into everyday teaching and learning, following 2 years of supporting the school with ICT, coding and robotics labs, training, and curriculum integration with Sifiso Learning Group.
In the ECM portfolio, when USAID funding that previously offered complementary funding closed in June 2025, the Regional Leadership Centre East Africa did not wind down. They designed their own sustainability plan, secured institutional commitment from Kenyatta University, and ran a second ECM Cohort, training 63 participants to 100% graduation across 13 countries. They did not ask TNF to solve the continuity question. They presented a solution, and the result was a second cohort of education leaders equipped and active across East and Central Africa.
Tackling Structural Barriers Across East & Central Africa
Across East and Central Africa, ECM-funded projects tackled specific, documented barriers to learning and produced outcomes that respond to deep-rooted structural issues in African communities.
OMOM Maasai
Enrolment surged from 20% to 60% in pastoralist community schools.
Shine Reusable Ministry
662 girls across 15 villages received menstrual health support linked directly to school retention.
Creative Learning Africa+
200 teachers trained & 22 Maths Rap Comics published to improve numeracy.
Kuze Kuze
169 learners assessed via AI diagnostics, enabling teachers to target learning gaps.
EAIST
40+ displaced youth trained with skills; facility capacity expanded to 200 by 2026.
Abrihot
94 parents of neurodivergent children connected in a support network to combat stigma.
Schools and partners sustaining and embedding practices and programmes
In 2025, evidence from our schools and partners showed that when projects and funding cycles end, ownership becomes evident through deliberate decisions to retain and embed what worked.
Braamfischerville & Khula Funda
After the Khula Funda cycle that supported 7 schools in Braamfischerville ended, 3 schools absorbed former Story Sparkers as permanent, school-funded staff, with one independently training 20 Early Childhood Development (ECD) staff to establish reading corners, DEAR periods, and self-sustaining reading clubs. Literacy practice moved from a TNF-delivered programme to a school-owned and community-sustained activity.
Willow Crescent Secondary
Over 200 Grade 8 learners at Willow Crescent Secondary accessed coding and robotics for the first time as a formally integrated curriculum subject – a school-led decision to move the programme from an after-school intervention into everyday teaching and learning, following 2 years of supporting the school with ICT, coding and robotics labs, training, and curriculum integration with Sifiso Learning Group.
RLC-EA & Kenyatta University
In the ECM portfolio, when USAID funding that previously offered complementary funding closed in June 2025, the Regional Leadership Centre East Africa did not wind down. They designed their own sustainability plan, secured institutional commitment from Kenyatta University, and ran a second ECM Cohort, training 63 participants to 100% graduation across 13 countries. They did not ask TNF to solve the continuity question. They presented a solution, and the result was a second cohort of education leaders equipped and active across East and Central Africa.