Advancing Freedom Worldwide: Meet Rising Tide’s Eight New Exciting Partners
March 18, 2024
At the Rising Tide Foundation, we’re delighted to have supported many exciting projects in the last few months that put classical liberal principles into practice and advance private sector solutions to societal problems.
From projects that advance economic literacy in former communist countries, encourage entrepreneurship in Swiss primary schools, combat illiberal trends globally through advocacy and research, or provide university education to thousands of disadvantaged young South Africans, these exciting initiatives are already empowering thousands of people and helping ensure a freer and more prosperous future. Keep reading to learn about some exciting projects we’ve recently supported.
Organization: Prometheus Institute
Project: Hekaton Cities
Housing shortages, economic stagnation, and crumbling infrastructure are issues increasingly afflicting German cities. Fortunately, with Rising Tide support, the Prometheus Institute is launching a 100-day accelerator program for projects with innovative market-based solutions to combat urban decay. By offering funding, project management training, and mentorship, this project will help five entrepreneurs enact and develop their unique ideas to transform cities into places of greater openness, creativity, and exchange.
Organization: American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)
Project: Defending Freedom, Combatting Collectivism
This new initiative from AIER will target collectivist ideas and illiberal ideologies which pose the greatest threat to freedom today. Collectivists on both the Right and Left have generated ideas and carefully communicated them to critical audiences: scholars, students, political leaders, and average Americans. Through conferences, seminars, media outreach, and academic research, AIER aims to pushback against collectivist ideas and regain crucial ground for individual liberty and classical liberalism.
Organization: Economic Fundamental Initiative
Project: Increasing economic literacy across secondary schools in Kosovo, Georgia, and Ukraine
Low levels of economic and financial literacy are pervasive throughout many former communist nations. Given their 20th century historical context, native languages are not equipped to discuss free markets and traditional learning environments are often unconducive to critical thinking. Consequently, millions of citizens are ill-informed about finances and economics. Fortunately, the Economic Fundamentals Initiative (EFI) is tackling this widespread problem.
With the Rising Tide Foundation’s support, EFI is embarking on a pilot project to expand the understanding of economics among 15- to 18-year-olds in three former communist countries: Kosovo, Georgia, and Ukraine. By training networks of teachers across these three countries, they hope to empower educators to teach economics in the classroom, thereby giving tens of thousands of students an education in economics. They are also translating and distributing many thousands of copies of the introductory economics book Common Sense Economics.
Organization: Bill of Rights Institute
Project: Teaching Freedom through Civics
The United States’ political and civic discourse is currently highly polarised. To counter this polarization, the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) is committed to ‘Teaching Freedom through Civics’ by creating a free, comprehensive digital textbook in civics. This adaptable and customizable civics textbook will be usable in part or whole by any high school civics or government course, including Advanced Placement courses in the U.S. Instead of centering the government as the prime engine of American growth and progress, BRI’s digital textbook will focus on civil society and the individual citizen’s role. This will challenge students to reimagine the respective roles of government and civil society.
Organization: Association Startfeld
Project: Education Program for Teachers: Creative Kids Fair @SmartFeld
Entrepreneurs testing innovative ideas in an open marketplace is crucial for creative destruction, economic growth, and societal progress. Yet, entrepreneurship is not a subject taught in Swiss primary schools. Fortunately, through its ‘Creative Kids Fair @SmartFeld’, Association Startfeld is looking to change this. Together with the Rising Tide Foundation, Association Startfeld will conduct workshops with teachers that focus on practical ways to integrate entrepreneurship into classrooms across Swiss Primary schools.
Organization: Atlas Network
Project: Resisting Illiberalism: Supporting Civil Society Against Authoritarianism
The Atlas Network’s “Resisting Illiberalism” grant program aims to combat the global rise of illiberalism. Through targeted funding, the project will empower civil society organizations and grassroots movements across Atlas’s network of 600 partners in 102 countries to develop projects that promote awareness and education on the dangers of authoritarianism. This project also includes learning events for grantees to encourage collaboration among like-minded organizations, share best practices, and brainstorm future collaborative projects that defend and advance free societies.
Organization: Maharishi Invincibility Institute
Project: Establishing an Education City
Maharishi Invincibility Institute is a low-cost tertiary educational institution in South Africa. Since its founding in 2007, the institute has educated over 22,000 low-income youths and placed over 19,000 graduates into long-term or permanent jobs. After three years of working, most MII graduates make at least 3.5 times their combined family’s salary.
Their project with the Rising Tide Foundation will support their mission to build an ‘Education City’ in Johannesburg’s Central Business District and support initial funding for some scholarships (which, through various schemes, become largely self-sustainable). This project, coupled with a donation of a large building by Anglo American and other support, will allow MII to increase their number of students from their current intake of 1,100 to over 5,000 in the next five years.
Organization: Academy of Ideas
Project: Battle of Ideas Festival
Public life depends on constructive dialogue, but open discussion has become increasingly impeded by a censorious climate. Cancel culture, refusal to debate with those across the political spectrum, and the policing of language have become more common than ever.
To push back against this censorious climate, we are delighted to support the Academy of Ideas’ annual flagship Battle of Ideas Festival. By bringing together over 400 leading speakers from a range of viewpoints to discuss the most pressing issues of the day to an audience of around 3000 attendees, the festival creates a platform where free speech is fervently upheld, conversations across the political aisle can take place, and meaningful solutions proposed.