About Earthrise:Live
A second swing at a very simple, very ambitious idea.
In 2015 and 2016, two global classroom Skype-a-thons connected over 100,000 children from classrooms across 63 countries on World Children's Day. Earthrise:Live is the relaunch - same idea, AI-era platform, annual cadence.
Where this came from
In 2015, Jason Elsom created and ran It's a World of Adventures - a Skype-a-thon that connected schools around the world on World Children's Day. The numbers, in the end, were ridiculous: over 115,000 children, 3,000+ schools, 63 countries, 2.5 million miles of communication. Adventure '16 followed the same pattern the next year.
The model worked because the core idea was good: when children from a classroom on one side of the world meet children from a classroom on the other side, something shifts. Curiosity beats stereotypes. Real human beings beat the abstract. And teachers, given a date and a partner, will do the rest.
Skype is gone. The platform that powered those events doesn't exist anymore. But the idea is even more relevant now, and the distribution we have to reach schools - through the WhatSchool global school data project - is an order of magnitude larger than it was in 2015.
What Earthrise:Live is
Earthrise:Live is a free, independent global schools event that helps schools connect classrooms across countries, cultures, and time zones each year in the week of World Children's Day. The main live connection day in 2026 is Thursday 19 November, with World Children's Day on Friday 20 November as the global anchor.
We do the matching, the time-zone maths, the teacher resources, the safeguarding scaffolding, and the country briefings. Schools do the exchange - using whatever video tool they already approve, or asynchronously when time zones get in the way.
What Earthrise:Live isn't
Earthrise:Live is not a charity microsite. It is not a substitute for your school's own safeguarding policy. It is not the official World Children's Day campaign - that is owned by the United Nations and UNICEF, and we take care to make that distinction clear at every turn.
Annual, not one-off
2026 is year one of the relaunch. Earthrise:Live is built to run every year, in the week of World Children's Day, indefinitely. Teachers who join in 2026 will be able to come back for a different partner in 2027, 2028, and beyond.
The long-term ambition
“The platform that helps every school in the world find another school in the world.”
That's the ten-year version of Earthrise:Live. The annual exchange, in the week of World Children's Day, is the starting point.
Who is behind it
Founded by someone who has done this before.
Jason Elsom
Founder, Earthrise:Live & WhatSchool
Earthrise:Live is founded by Jason Elsom, a technology entrepreneur and global education leader whose work sits at the intersection of information, opportunity and social impact.
He is the founder of WhatSchool, the world’s largest education-information platform. He was previously Chief Executive of Parentkind, the UK’s largest parent charity, and Chief Executive of Speakers for Schools, the UK’s largest social mobility charity, where he grew work-experience opportunities from 1,500 placements to more than 165,000 - helping hundreds of thousands of young people reach employers and opportunities that would otherwise have stayed out of reach.
In 2015 and 2016 he organised two of the largest live global classroom exchanges ever undertaken, connecting around 250,000 children across 63 countries. Earthrise:Live is the next chapter. His board and advisory roles have included the Department for Education in England, the University of Oxford, Strathclyde University, the National Institute of Teaching, the Foundation for Education Development, ACS International Schools, the Childhood Trust and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The reach behind it
Powered by WhatSchool.
WhatSchool is building the world’s education graph.
By organising and connecting information about schools, qualifications, careers and learning pathways, WhatSchool helps people and machines better understand global education. Its platform spans 3.7 million schools, half a million nurseries, 8,000 universities and billions of data points across more than seventy-five countries and is used by families, educators, researchers, governments and AI systems seeking trusted educational information.
That reach is what makes a global classroom exchange possible at this scale - and it is how Earthrise:Live can invite schools in every corner of the world to take part.
Legal positioning
Independent. By design.
Earthrise:Live is an independent initiative created to help schools mark World Children's Day. It does not own World Children's Day, is not an official UN/UNICEF programme, and never claims to be.