DILSE Learn

A shared school for the sector — where the people who know teach, and money stops deciding who gets to learn.

Summary in a nutshell

My mission

The people holding this sector together deserve to keep getting better at it, and the fee should never be the thing that decides who does.

Wishlist from our ecosystem

These are the things people in this ecosystem wish they had.

A development professional

Doing a job they grew into rather than trained for. Which is most people here.

An organisation that trains people

Has the expertise. Spends a painful share of every budget on finding the people who want it.

A funder

Funds programmes. Rarely gets to fund people.

5 wishes. Grant the ones you would.

Nobody has been unwilling. Capacity budgets are the first line cut, demand for training has never been visible to anyone in a position to fund it, and so both sides have spent years assuming the other was not there.

The loop it is stuck in

Five quantities, in the same order in both states. Watch the second arrow — it is the only thing that changes.

The silent demand

One negative link. The more people want to train, the less anyone can tell.

1 negative link

People who want to train

Where the asking happens

Privately, to their own manager

How much demand funders can see

Seats sponsored

How affordable a seat becomes

1
People who want to train
+leads to
2
Where the asking happens
Privately, to their own manager
−leads to
3
How much demand funders can see
+leads to
4
Seats sponsored
+leads to
5
How affordable a seat becomes
+back to the top
B
The silent demandOne negative link. The more people want to train, the less anyone can tell.

The one change

Let people say what they need where the money can hear it.

Look at the second link. Wanting to train is expressed privately — to a manager, in an appraisal, in a budget line that gets cut in March. Private asks do not add up to anything, so the more people want it, the more of that wanting is invisible.

Which is why both sides have spent years assuming the other is not there. Funders see no demand; learners see no funding. The loop balances at precisely the level where nothing has to change.

Move the asking somewhere shared and the link changes sign. Forty-two people on a waitlist is not forty-two private conversations — it is one number a funder can act on, and each extra name makes it more compelling rather than less audible.

Now go and see how they’re grantedThis page is the what and the why. The product is the how.