Collaboration is key to supporting children and young adults with special education needs, a desire both Special iApps and Learn and Thrive share. These collaborations can provide children like our own with equal opportunities to learning, helping them to reach their full potential by removing barriers in education.
As part of the launch of Teach Me Too resources in Special Words Plus, we thought it would be great to share with you how Special iApps and Learn and Thrive are funded, and how you can play a part.
How are Special iApps Funded?
You may already know that Special iApps are a non-profit social enterprise. Every business can either profit from society and keep it all to themselves or invest their profits back into transforming their community. For us, that choice was simple! Being a social enterprise is about changing the world for the better, about improving people's lives and helping those who need us most.
Being a non-profit social enterprise, we had relied on grant funding to get us where we are today. However, due to the pandemic there is reduced availability of the types of grants that social enterprises rely on, meaning we had to create our new membership in order to be sustainable and continue making a difference in the edtech landscape for years to come.
When you become a Special iApps member, your money allows our small team to create apps and resources to make a real difference to learning. It allows us to help vulnerable families who may not otherwise be able to afford educational technology for their family. It allows us to work with our global community to provide translations and localisations so every child has equal opportunities to education regardless of where they’re from or what language they speak.
How are Learn and Thrive Funded?
Just like Special iApps, Learn and Thrive exist entirely for the greater good, in order to provide support to our community. Their priority is people with Down syndrome, their family members and the support network around them. The difference between us is that Learn and Thrive are set up as a charity.
They receive funds in several ways, allowing them to offer their services for free and keep their charitable operation running. Learn and Thrive are supported through community donations and fundraising events. Their latest fundraiser saw huge donations from the Down syndrome community in support of their Strictly Makaton Challenge.
The support from their community donations and fundraisers allows Learn and Thrive to access grants from a number of organisations that support charities. They have received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which allowed them to develop their new Learning for Life project. They also receive funding support from their corporate supporter Quality Compliance Systems.
Supporting Our Work
We both have the same goal of making a real difference in the communities that not only embraced but made a real difference to the lives of our children and families. While our organisations may receive funding slightly differently, we share many of the same goal. We want to help you access each other’s resources to help every child thrive in life.
Learn and Thrive, just like Special iApps, take donations in order to continue creating educational resources to support our community. If you’re in a position to help, please consider donating today to support children just like yours.