Literacy

The Mali USAID/ PHARE program (Programme Harmonisé d’Appui au Renforcement de l’Education) supports the Malian Ministry of Education’s efforts to improve the quality of elementary education, with an emphasis on literacy. This five-year program works nationally, reaching over 40,000 classrooms and 500,000 students. Known as “Road to Reading” in English, the program will produce and broadcast Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) programs for grades 1–6 with dual instructional objectives for teachers and students.

Working in collaboration with Save the Children, EDC is using its existing organizational structures in Blantyre to design and produce a minimum of 10 audio programs as part of an IRI pilot program for strengthening Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Malawi’s Community Based Child Care Centers (CBCCs). During the pilot phase, EDC is overseeing the full development of ECD IRI programs; this includes scriptwriting, studio production, collaboration with Save the Children on pilot roll out, and formative evaluation of lessons.

Preparing Youth for Work (PAS), an EQUIP3 Associate Award, is a workforce preparation program that assists minimally educated youth (ages 16–30) from East Timor’s most rural areas in gaining the skills and expertise needed to find job opportunities and promising futures. These young men and women will benefit from the program’s 8-month combination of off-the-job classroom instruction, on-the-job training, and livelihood accompaniment.

ERO is creating K–3 curriculum activities that will become part of SAE International’s A World in Motion® (AWIM) Program. These activities consist of one six-to-eight-session unit for each grade level. Each unit will include a book geared toward children at that level, written specifically for the project by award-winning children’s book author Stephen Krensky. The integration of these books into the curriculum units will be used to build children’s literacy skills (reading, writing, and speaking).

ALMA’s mission is to help adults gain basic reading, writing, and math skills. ALMA creates innovative, educationally sound, and entertaining television-based teaching materials and cultivates community networks to support ALMA learners. TV411, ALMA’s magazine-format television series (with ancillary print materials and an instructional Web site) is aired on more than 100 stations nationwide.

Using a Literacy 360 approach that acknowledges that children’s literacy is strengthened when they are surrounded by an abundance of opportunities to practice and reinforce specific skills, the Ready to Learn initiative is producing and distributing educational video programming and curricula for children ages 2–8, their parents and educators.