Story of EADS
The directors of EADS are a team of two female, experienced education and development practitioners passionate about the Power of Education to transform lives. We want to enable, through our work, as many children as possible to access quality education that can lift them out of poverty, as well as empowering decision-takers and change-makers at all levels of government, civil society and private sector to leverage the transformative power of Education for positive progress.
EADS emerged from a joint dream when the founders were working together in Uganda from 2010-2013, a dream that emerged from gaps we all found in the education and development project management and consultancy arena in our work as education programme managers for NGOs and the United Nations, especially where we were frequently in involved in recruiting education consultants and companies to manage projects.
Rosaria, EADS Director, on a programme monitoring visit to schools in Karamoja (North Western Uganda) in 2011.
Our individual and combined experience of 40+ years in education programme design, management, monitoring and evaluation, highlighted a gap in the marketplace for a smaller, more personal, education-focused company, in which the founders and directors/senior-managers, are experienced educators and educational development practitioners in low-income and emerging market countries with contextual and cultural understanding of the critical issues.
The Gaps that EADS will address
Inadequate experience & competences amongst consultants
Consultants that the founders of EADS recruited and worked with in our previous posts, too often, did not have long-term experience in the field or possess the competences, in particular, interpersonal and inter-cultural skills, required to provide successful services that we, as clients, needed, to best support our clients. EADS promises that our consultants will have the requisite experience and competencies to meet clients’ needs.
Companies not education focused
Too often the companies bidding for our work contracts were international development companies and not education and development focused. EADS is an education and development focused company.
Companies large and impersonal
Too often the companies were large and impersonal and managed by personnel with no technical expertise or experience of managing education or even international development projects. EADS is managed by two highly experienced education and development practitioners and managers.
Lack of Quality Control
Too often, we encountered a lack of quality control in agreed work outputs, especially consultant reports, meaning that further editing was required by us, or that the output products were not useable as intended. We at EADS will ensure that our work is of the highest standard to both capture and convey, concisely and clearly, the salient issues.
Profit focus
Most international development companies have profit-generation as their core goal, with education as an add-on. At EADS, our vision, mission and values are built on the bedrock of the power of education and we believe in leveraging this amazing tool for wider social transformation.
CSR and Education & SDGs
The opportunity arose in 2019 for the founders to converge here in Ireland and to collaborate to launch EADS. Our collaboration here in Ireland led to the addition of a third focus area for us, which can also realise our vision. Meeting with various company directors and CSR managers in Ireland, we realised that although there is superficial knowledge around the Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) many companies have neither the expertise nor tools to practically supporting them. At EADS have devised a unique business approach to providing education and SDG-focused Corporate Social Responsibility.