improving education and health worldwide
- EDC is a global nonprofit organization that designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic opportunity. Working with public-sector and private partners, we harness the power of people and systems to improve education, health promotion and care, workforce preparation, communications technologies, and civic engagement.
- EDC conducts 350 projects in 35 countries around the world … (about 1/2).
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Addresses (1 of 3): Education Development Center EDC Headquarters, 55 Chapel Street, Newton, MA, 02458-1060, USA;
Contact.
About 2/2: … Our services include research, training, educational materials and strategy, with activities ranging from seed projects to large-scale national and international initiatives.
EDC enjoys a worldwide reputation for its excellence in program and fiscal management and for the impact of its work.
EDC is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) organization. Most fundamentally, this means that no profit accrues to any individual. Our work is supported through grants and contracts from a variety of sources, including U.S. and foreign government agencies, private foundations, nonprofit organizations, universities, and corporations. As a publicly supported, publicly accountable organization, we have a special obligation to carry out work of the highest quality and integrity.
While the issues we address are diverse, all that we do is united by our conviction that learning is the liberating force in human development. We are committed to education that builds knowledge and skill, makes possible a deeper understanding of the world, and engages learners as active, problem-solving participants.
EDC was founded in 1958 by university scholars and researchers who saw the need for an independent, free-standing institution that could bring together academics and teachers, business and community leaders, creative artists, and talented researchers to achieve reform of science and mathematics curricula. That collaborative, inclusive spirit has remained a guiding force through the years, producing a distinctive working style.
At its founding, EDC was unique. There were no federally funded regional laboratories and centers or other nonprofit (or, for that matter) profit-making research and development organizations working broadly on issues of national and international import in education. EDC’s appearance on the scene coincided with a growing national investment in the education sector. From its beginnings, this institution was designed to fill the distinctive roles of catalyst, experimenter, and developer and to be an instrument for improvement and renewal.
As scholar and educator Jerome Bruner said, « EDC started off like so much does in America . . . in response to a gap. » The Cold War and the emergence of the Russian space program in the late 1950s stoked American concerns about a glaring national weakness in math and science. Jerrold Zacharias, an eminent physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, brought together a group of some of the nation’s top scientists, teachers, and technical specialists to develop a new high school physics curriculum, PSSC Physics. This curriculum, funded by the National Science Foundation, focused on science as the product of experiment and theory, constructed by real people. EDC introduced it successfully in schools across the country and eventually in many parts of the world … (full text History).