Education

Investing in education to break the generational cycles of poverty and to make a fundamental contribution to children’s well-being

Education

Investing in education to break the generational cycles of poverty and to make a fundamental contribution to children’s well-being

Highlights

Surpassed by 8%

In Rwanda, students participating in a USDA-funded Unlock Literacy activity surpassed the goal for the target average reading score by more than 8%.

3.3 million children reached

All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development — a partnership of USAID, the Australian government, and World Vision to improve reading outcomes for marginalized children in low-resource contexts — reached 3.3 million children in 49 countries.

35,783 youth supported

In Guatemala, our education projects provided 35,788 youth with information, knowledge, and skills to access opportunities and improve their income, empowering them to take control of their future.

Summary

World Vision’s goal is to ensure equitable access to quality education and improved retention and learning for all girls and boys — including those with disabilities — in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and social and emotional learning for improved life opportunities. We seek to remove barriers to education and create a supportive environment for learning where children feel protected and safe from violence.

We work with children and adolescents, schools, communities, and local governments to increase teacher skills, remove harmful social and gender norms that contribute to gender-based violence in schools, build capacity in inclusive education, provide access to reading materials in local languages, and strengthen school management and parental/community involvement in education.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, 10 & 16

We aim to make an impact on children’s lives by working with communities, partners, and local governments to:

  • Support play-based early childhood development approaches
  • Increase the number of primary school children who can read and achieve a minimum proficiency in mathematics
  • Ensure more girls and boys are protected from violence
  • Improve adolescents’ education and life skills
  • Leverage innovation and technology to increase reading outcomes for children with disabilities and those in low-resource contexts

Education Subsectors

Early Childhood Development

Early Childhood Development

The earliest years of a child’s life are a window of opportunity to support the emergence of literacy and numeracy skills and social and emotional competencies. Early childhood development (ECD) programs are powerful equalizers for children who live in resource-poor settings and play an important role in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. World Vision’s presence at the community level enables us to build on existing local strengths, resources, and positive practices to support this stage of development with holistic, integrated approaches. As young children actively develop, we engage a continuum of actors — including parents, caregivers, teachers, schools, community members, and policymakers — to carry out contextually relevant, play-based ECD solutions and establish the strongest foundation for children’s futures.

Early Childhood Development FAQS:

Why is ECD foundational for children’s learning success?



Early childhood development is a critical ingredient in lifelong learning, establishment of peaceful societies, and the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4. Research concludes that ECD yields a higher return on investment than interventions that take place later in life. It is increasingly recognized as one of the most important investments that countries and families can make to help children lead productive lives.

What is World Vision’s approach to ECD?



World Vision believes that all children deserve to experience life in all its fullness, and this includes the right to early childhood development (e.g., pre-primary) support. We also know that early learning starts at home with caregivers and parents. Our approach prepares young children for a successful transition to formal school. We aim to reach the most vulnerable children ages 3 to 6 through increased access to safe and stimulating learning environments, positive parenting interventions, play materials (including locally made toys), teacher training, and policy advocacy to increase access to quality pre-primary programming.

What are some examples of World Vision’s efforts and results?


USAID Rwanda Uburezi Iwacu (Homes and Communities) activity: The main objective of the Uburezi Iwacu (UI) project in Rwanda is to ensure that all children have a safe, healthy, and stimulating home and community environment. UI supports families to create home environments that encourage and support children’s learning in the following ways: 1) encouraging positive parenting approaches, 2) providing conducive reading spaces, 3) reading to children and listening to children read, 4) taking advantage of reading materials, 5) participating in literacy activities, and 6) engaging with schools to support their children’s reading.
UI engages communities by providing new high-quality and accessible literacy materials and 12 community libraries. The project also facilitates 4,224 Parent Support Networks, which support children’s well-being, language development, literacy, and social-emotional learning. The networks operate in 30 districts and comprise 147,038 parents/caregivers. More than 6,000 role model parents (2,749 males, 3,445 females) and 19,224 community education volunteers (8,962 males, 10,262 females) were trained to identify and support children suspected of having developmental delays and children with disabilities and their families. In addition, 6,366 ECD caregivers (1,650 males, 4,716 females) were empowered with skills to create accessible and safe learning environments, play materials for children with special needs, and learning corners for early stimulation and children’s literacy development. More than 1,300 teachers (588 males, 736 females) were trained on inclusive education practices and Universal Design for Learning principles to effectively support learning for ALL children.
Also in Rwanda, World Vision implemented early learning programming with children who have become refugees. Through the Care and Comfort for Children on the Move project, funded by the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, World Vision is partnering with Sesame Workshop to develop training materials, including facilitator guides, posters, activity cards, radio sessions, key messages, and videos on positive parenting, safety, security, water, sanitation, and hygiene. The project trained 44 community facilitators on these project modules, and 1,500 caregivers received six training sessions. The community facilitators conducted home visits to all 1,500 caregivers to ensure the lessons were being replicated and to provide additional support to caregivers, including psychosocial support.

Foundational Skills

boy standing in front of a post

Literacy unlocks human potential and is the cornerstone of development. It leads to better health, better employment opportunities, and safer and more stable societies. However, 58 million primary-school–age children are not enrolled in school; 54 percent of these are girls. According to UNICEF, “an estimated 70 percent of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries are now unable to understand a simple written text.” These children are at greater risk for exploitation, child marriage, and lower income-earning potential. World Vision supports community-based reading programs that increase community engagement in promoting children’s literacy, and help caregivers and families improve home literacy environments.

Foundational Skills FAQS:

Why is learning to read particularly important in the early grades?


Children who fail to read in the early grades fall further behind each school year, as the ability to read is critical for acquiring other types of knowledge. Learning to read constitutes the building blocks upon which a child’s education is built. As often emphasized, “children must first learn to read before they can read to learn.”
Literacy acquisition in the first years of primary school or earlier is especially critical for academic success in later grades. Poorly performing students struggle to catch up, and many of them drop out of school. Children who do not develop reading skills during early primary education are on a lifetime trajectory of limited educational attainment and, therefore, limited economic opportunities. Furthermore, the educational achievement of a country’s population directly correlates with its economic growth rate.

Why is it so important to involve communities in supporting foundational skills for children?


World Vision complements and strengthens what children learn in school by guiding parents and communities to better support the literacy skills of their children. We partner with parents to discuss the importance of learning to read in early primary school and guide them with practical techniques to support their children to read at home and in their community. This type of involvement is an important way of supporting children as they learn to read and foster their love of reading.

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in foundational skills?


USAID Ethiopia/Creative Associates READ II activity: As a sub-recipient to Creative Associates International Inc. under the READ II activity in Ethiopia, World Vision was responsible for engaging parents, youth, and the surrounding school community to create reading camps where children enjoy learning to read. The goal of the READ II activity was to contribute to improving the literacy and educational level of 15 million children in seven target regions. World Vision supported local grantees and communities to establish 5,945 fully functioning reading camps to supplement the literacy acquisition of 815,600 students outside of regular school hours. With the armed conflict in Ethiopia in November 2020, USAID redirected READ II to mount an Education in Crisis and Conflict response in Amhara, Afar, and Tigray. Since 2022, World Vision has worked with internally displaced people and host communities in Amhara to carry out appropriate short-term educational activities that help children heal and resume learning in a humanitarian crisis that killed more than 600,000 people. Parent Awareness Workshops (PAW) were held with 304,789 parents and local education and community officials on psychological first aid and psychosocial support. The outcome assessment revealed overwhelming support for PAW sessions — 75% of Kebele Education Technical Board participants indicated that it was the most important intervention in relation to school enrollment and retention.

USAID Dominican Republic/UNIBE READ (LEER) activity: READ was a five-year project to improve early grade reading instruction and support for 400 schools located in the country’s Duarte corridor. In partnership with UNIBE, World Vision engaged parents from 200 target communities through trained project mobilizers drawn from nongovernmental organizations, informal groups, or faith-based organizations with strong ties to the target communities. World Vision reached 9,000 primary school children through community-based education support programs and supplemental reading materials. At least 4,000 of those children were students with special needs who received specific support to improve their learning. World Vision also involved 200 committees of Parents, Mothers, and Friends of the School and community governance structures in educational support.

Adolescent Education

students in a classroom

World Vision’s adolescent education programming focuses on increasing students’ retention and completion of primary school to support a strong transition to lower secondary school. According to UNICEF, “Although 92 percent of children globally have entered primary school, over 40 percent of these students do not make it to upper secondary school.” Many drop out between upper primary school and secondary school due to myriad barriers that they face as they progress through their education. World Vision’s approach uses a socioecological framework to engage children, teachers, caregivers/parents, faith leaders, and other adults in the community to promote a child-friendly, safe, nurturing, equitable, and inclusive environment where all young adolescents (defined as ages 10 to 14 by the World Health Organization) can learn, remain in school, and safely transition to secondary school to continue their education.

Adolescent Education FAQS:

Why is adolescent education important for lifelong learning?



Early adolescence is a period of complex transitions for many young people, which is compounded in low-resource settings that tend to exacerbate challenges. Therefore, education is critical for providing young people with a sense of stability and security to remain in primary school and move on to attain their secondary education.

What is World Vision’s approach to adolescent education?



World Vision believes in fostering a safe learning environment to increase primary school retention, completion, and transition to secondary, especially for the most vulnerable girls and boys — including children with disabilities. Globally, physical and psychological punishment, verbal abuse, bullying, and sexual violence in schools have been repeatedly reported as reasons for absenteeism, dropping out, and lack of motivation for academic achievement. World Vision is responding to reduce absenteeism and drop-out rates by cultivating school environments that are free from gender-based violence, which disproportionately affects girls.

What are some examples of World Vision’s efforts and results?


World Vision implements the Safe and Nurturing Schools model in Malawi to prevent and respond to school-related gender-based violence in and around the school. The program uses a whole-school approach to build school leadership and community engagement to enable safe learning environments, establish a code of conduct, build the capacity of teachers and educational staff, and empower children on children’s rights, participation, and equality. Baseline findings point to several potential normative drivers of school-related gender-based violence, such as community acceptance of violence, reluctance to report violence, cultural and societal beliefs about traditional gender roles within society and in educational contexts, and child marriage.
World Vision’s Safe and Nurturing Schools project is featured in this Social Norms Atlas in the Education Sector section as an illustration of programming to address social norms in education. This intervention is also becoming a core approach in similar contexts, such as in Mozambique (Advancing Girls Education through USAID support) and in Zambia (foundation-supported) to address school-related gender-based violence to keep children safe in school.

Youth

Youth

History’s largest adolescent and youth population is at a crossroads. Nearly 90% of today’s 1.8 billion young people are concentrated in developing countries where they are disproportionately affected by poverty, violence, poor health, unemployment, and exclusion. With too few opportunities for quality education, gainful work, and participation in community life, half of the world’s young people are neither learning nor working. Stuck and frustrated, they risk becoming a destabilizing force.

World Vision believes that healthy, productive, and engaged youth can contribute to peace and prosperity as positive change agents in their own lives and in their communities. Grounded in this hope, World Vision created two evidence-based Positive Youth Development (PYD) programming models: Impact+ and Youth Ready. We work with families and communities to create a safe and supportive environment of youth-friendly services, economic and civic opportunities, and policies that empower young people to define their identity, strengthen their agency, build their skills and personal assets, gain financial independence, contribute positively to their communities, and establish a lasting sense of belonging.

Youth FAQS:

What is Positive Youth Development (PYD)?


The PYD framework has become the global standard for informing evidence-based youth programming. It focuses on four domains of change critical to achieving a vision of healthy, productive, and engaged youth:

  • Assets: Youth have resources, skills, and competencies for success. These can include social and emotional skills, vocational training, critical thinking, and communication.
  • Agency: Youth have a positive identity and recognize their ability to change their lives by making their own decisions, planning, and persisting in positive actions.
  • Contribution: Youth engage with opportunities to generate positive change in their own lives and to improve the well-being of their communities.
  • Enabling environment: The social, normative, structural, and physical environment provides protection, recognition, and support for youth to grow and thrive.

What skills matter most for youth?



World Vision partnered with the World Bank and Institute for Research into Youth Thriving and Evaluation to create a unique skills framework based on six identity dimensions of youth empowered for success at work and in life. These “Youth Superpowers” identities include creative visionary, inclusive collaborator, reflective problem solver, empathetic change-maker, resilient agent, and productive citizen. Each identity is defined by a cluster of powers, which are learned and strengthened through project participation, and include skills (like financial and digital literacy, career planning, and entrepreneurship), competencies (like teamwork, communication, self-care, and problem solving) and mindsets (like sense of purpose, curiosity, courage, and perseverance). In all, 37 powers prepare healthy, productive, and engaged youth for economic opportunities and empower them to contribute to the greater good and to care for others.

What is the role of the private sector?


The private sector is engaged to support youth through:

  • Targeted training: informing the content of vocational and soft-skills training to ensure relevancy to local market conditions
  • Work opportunities: creating new opportunities for internships, on-the-job training, and employment for vulnerable and excluded youth
  • Financial inclusion: developing youth-friendly financial products and services to improve financial education, increase savings, and finance youth entrepreneurship
  • Positive adult relationships: mentoring and coaching youth while working to change negative attitudes and norms that impede the full social and economic participation of marginalized youth

What are some examples of World Vision’s work in this area?


In Guatemala, World Vision is leading a consortium of organizations to implement the USAID-funded Puentes Project. Puentes is a positive youth development project that aims to improve quality of life and unlock the potential of youth ages 15 to 29 in the Western Highlands region of Guatemala. The project provides youth with soft-skills training and provides opportunities for youth to pursue their goals in education, employment, and entrepreneurship. Through the Puentes Project, youth can access alternative education, vocational training, STEAM education, agricultural training, entrepreneurship training, support for starting businesses, workforce readiness training, job placement support, psychosocial support, and vocational orientation. The project engages the government of Guatemala, the private sector, and civil society to provide youth with the skills needed to meet emerging market needs and to help vulnerable youth continue their education, find employment, become entrepreneurs, and improve the quality of their lives, thereby addressing the drivers of irregular migration. The Puentes Project empowers youth to take control of their future with information, knowledge, and skills to access opportunities and improve their income, and connects them to support services that are critical to their overall well-being. To date, over 32,000 youth have enrolled in the project.
World Vision’s Youth Workforce Development/Youth Ready in Honduras seeks to improve economic opportunities for young women and men, ages 15 to 29, by inviting them to participate in our Youth Ready program. The program helps youth to better position themselves to find jobs, self-employment via entrepreneurship, continued education, or education reinsertion opportunities, thereby enabling them to sustain productive and self-sufficient lives. Youth Ready serves high-risk youth living in the cities of Choluteca, Tegucigalpa, La Ceiba, El Progreso, and Comayagua, where more than 85% of working-age youth are unemployed. Today, the project has certified 6,257 young people in the Youth Ready methodology and enabled more than 3,000 youth to find jobs, start a business, and/or continue their studies. The program is set to expand to the three countries in the Northern Triangle in the next few years.

All Children Reading

All Children Reading

Reading is an essential skill needed to succeed in school. However, even before the pandemic, more than 460 million children were identified as having reading difficulties. Since the pandemic, when schools were shut down and education was disrupted, the number of children who lack basic reading skills has risen 26% to over 584 million, according to the United Nations. At particularly high risk are those in low-resource contexts, especially children with disabilities.

Education in the 21st century must leverage innovation and technology to help children learn to read, complete school, and escape poverty. In 2011, World Vision partnered with USAID and the Australian government to launch All Children Reading: Learn A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) to advance education technology (EdTech) solutions and tools to help address gaps and barriers to child literacy. For over a decade, ACR GCD has implemented solutions for vulnerable children in and outside of school, in crisis, and in emergency situations.

All Children Reading FAQS:

Why is leveraging technology important in the literacy and education sectors?


When applied appropriately, EdTech helps address learning gaps and can help boost child literacy programs and traditional teaching and learning methodologies in and outside of school, in crisis, and in emergency situations.

Highly mobile, EdTech brings the classroom to any location, which was especially important for children affected by school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently important for the 4 million children displaced due to refugee crises around the world. EdTech allows more children, parents, and their teachers to receive support and learning materials faster — and in better selection and quality — through the internet and mobile devices.

A recent intervention by World Bank that provided children with low-cost smartphones preloaded with two EdTech solutions — developed with support and funding from ACR GCD — provides compelling evidence that EdTech can improve reading outcomes for children in low-resource contexts in as little as five days, with learning outcomes continuing to improve one month out.

EdTech also enables greater access to teaching and learning materials for children with disabilities. More than 93 million children globally have a disability In countries with high poverty levels, approximately 85% of primary-school–age children with disabilities who are not in school have never attended school, according to the World Bank Inclusive Education Initiative. Factors like a lack of suitable transportation and infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, or a dearth of quality learning resources prevent children with disabilities from attending or fully participating in school, leaving them among the most marginalized in access to education. This challenge has been further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and forced migration.

Through ACR GCD, World Vision invested in the most promising EdTech innovations and approaches with a series of challenges and prizes to address gaps and barriers to child literacy. We also partnered with leading education researchers to measure the impact of those approaches and advance innovations with the greatest potential to improve reading outcomes for children in low-resource contexts.

That investment has generated solutions like technology that opens literacy opportunities for Moroccan children who are deaf/hard of hearing; game-changing mobile technology that reaches teachers in remote areas with literacy instruction tips and training; ground-breaking early grade reading assessment for children with sensory disabilities; technology that strengthens education for refugee children; downloadable mobile games to help out-of-school Syrian children gain literacy skills; innovation to expand access to Nicaraguan Sign Language; book creation software; and online libraries like World Around You, Bloom Library, Kitkit School, and Bookshare, containing accessible books.

Read about more solutions below or explore more tools and resources on ACR GCD’s solution hub.

What is open-source technology, and why is it important for EdTech solutions?


Open-source technology is free to use and available for schools, teachers, or parents to share and improve as needed. This makes solutions not only sustainable but also scalable for wider use by more schools, children, and their parents. ACR GCD’s commitment is to identify, fund, and scale the use of open-source solutions to increase access to books and other reading materials to boost literacy, especially for the most vulnerable children.

One successful example of how open-source technology can do this is EduApp4Syria, which was created through our competition to develop smartphone apps that build foundational literacy skills in Arabic and improve psychosocial well-being for Syrian refugee children. Curious Learning, a leading NGO in EdTech, obtained the open-source code for Feed the Monster from GitHub, originally produced in Arabic and English, and adapted it into more than 48 languages, increasing access to the application and amplifying its impact. For example, in 2021, Feed the Monster was adapted into the Nepali language and is currently being used by more than 60,000 users in Nepal. It is also part of a catalog of solutions created by an ACR awardee to help teachers choose the right technologies to support children with disabilities. Curious Learning’s new Follow the Learners dashboard showcases the breadth of Feed the Monster use, now totaling more than 815,000 users globally.

ACR GCD also required all content produced with its funding to be Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licensed, which allows others to use and adapt innovations for free, with appropriate accreditation. This included any books produced or adapted, training and coaching manuals, parent engagement booklets, and more. All CC-BY licensed materials produced by ACR GCD innovators — including books, training manuals, and resources (such as videos and flipbooks) that support teacher, parent, and community engagement in children’s reading — are available for others to use or adapt.

Why is World Vision committed to born-accessible and inclusive solutions?


Born-accessible publishing standards ensure that storybooks are adapted for children who are blind, deaf, or hard of hearing. Producing books in accessible formats — like audio, braille, large print, and sign language — not only can save time and cost when compared to retroactively adapting materials to meet accessibility standards, but also helps publishers and writers think about the broader range of needs of children learning to read.

Through ACR GCD, World Vision extended its focus on inclusive education and technology aid to meet our promise to help all children, especially those with disabilities, to be able to read. ACR GCD was one of the largest innovation funds focused on reading for children with disabilities. In the past decade, over 1.8 million learning materials were distributed in more than 30 countries, including more than 1 million books and ebooks in more than 50 local languages, with a primary focus on Africa and Asia. These materials include storybooks in local sign languages and braille for children in Mali, Rwanda, Philippines, Nepal, Fiji, and other locations around the world.

What are some examples of successful EdTech solutions that have improved literacy for vulnerable children in low-resource contexts?


Below are just a few of the more than 80 solutions ACR GCD innovators have created or implemented in the last 10 years. To explore more, visit ACR GCD’s solution hub.

Books in underserved languages, including sign languages, available for free use and translation through online digital libraries

Millions of children have few to no books in languages they use or understand, which hinders their ability to learn to read and succeed in school. For children with disabilities, the lack of adapted storybooks in accessible formats — like braille, audio accessibility, or sign language versions — hampers development. Children with disabilities struggle to learn to communicate with their families and friends, leaving them isolated from their community. Providing accessible books is essential for these children to live a better life and help them on their path to literacy, which is a proven factor in succeeding in education and escaping poverty.

To address this shortage of books, ACR GCD supports the development and improvement of several online libraries and open-source software that facilitate the creation and availability of accessible books, including:

  • Asafeer’s library, an online collection of quality, cost-efficient, and trackable resources and books in Arabic
  • Bloom Library, a global collection of books created with Bloom software, an easy tool to create simple books and translate them into multiple languages
  • Bookshare, an online library of accessible content for people with print disabilities, such as dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers
  • Global Digital Library, a free, web-based platform that makes high-quality early learning resources available in more than 90 languages, including sign languages
  • Let’s Read, Asia’s only free digital library for children, with resources and books that explore important topics and can be downloaded and printed for offline use
  • World Around You, a collection of sign language storybooks created through open-source software that enables communities to create and share digital books and literacy content in local and national sign languages

More solutions for children who are blind or low vision

ACR GCD implemented a wide range of open-source solutions to help bridge gaps to literacy for children who are blind and low vision, including:

  • eBraille storybooks: ACR GCD innovator eKitabu provided 220 eBraille renditions of storybooks created for the Malawian context. These stories will be uploaded to Orbit readers (a refreshable braille display and stand-alone reader device) across schools for blind and low-vision children in Malawi.
  • Digital storybooks in underserved languages: Also under the Begin with Books prize, innovators SIL LEAD and eKitabu are creating digital storybooks in underserved languages in Mali through the addition of human-narrated audio, which is engaging and easy to follow. This provides greater access to reading materials to all children, especially for underserved languages that do not have text-to-speech options.
  • Early Grade Reading Assessments in Braille (EGRA-Braille): EGRA is a globally recognized standard for measuring foundational skills for literacy acquisition. ACR GCD innovators, along with monitoring and evaluation specialists from School-to-School, conducted several of the first EGRA-Braille adaptations and baselines in the world to assess children who are blind/low vision. Read more about the EGRA adaptation process and access the baseline reports of the four grantees that have conducted EGRAs for children with disabilities (as well as other grantee surveys).
  • Accessible books for individuals with print disabilities via Bookshare: With funding from ACR GCD, Benetech provided human-narrated audio capabilities to Bookshare, the world’s largest digital accessible library and Benetech’s flagship Global Literacy. They piloted this innovation in four primary schools in India, providing students who are blind/low vision with accessible educational content to listen to on low-cost audio devices while simultaneously reading braille. Importantly, the project taught students to read in their spoken tongue, Marathi. Learn more about what Benetech is doing.
  • Minimum standards for sign language storybook production: Committed to scaling the sustainable production of high-quality sign language storybooks, ACR GCD — in collaboration with Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf — is leading the development of minimum standards for sign language storybook production in low-resource contexts.

Solutions in emergency and crisis contexts

Below are a few solutions and tools — all of which are open-source and free to use — as well as links to guidelines for policy makers, designers, implementers, and donors considering the use of EdTech and Information Communication Technology (ICT) to increase reading outcomes for children in crisis or emergency situations.

Can I or my organization access, use, or adapt these solutions?



Yes! ACR GCD’s achievements are uniquely and purposefully positioned to strengthen the work of the entire education sector. One of ACR GCD’s main objectives is to provide the education community with resources that will enhance their work and enable them to reach as many children in marginalized and vulnerable contexts as possible. ACR GCD solutions and research are free to use and available to schools, teachers, parents, policymakers, implementors, and others to share and improve as needed.

Education Stories

All Children Reading: Learn A Grand Challenge for Development’s (ACR GCD) legacy is an education technology game-changer in low-resource and crisis contexts to bridge gaps in access to literacy, both in school and out of school, including students with disabilities. ACR GCD also improves reading outcomes through innovations like online digital libraries.

World Vision’s nimble and innovative work under the USAID Ethiopia READ II project, which closed in 2023, included repurposing reading camps to providing emotional support to initiating book-sharing movements. In partnership with Creative Associates International, World Vision supported a vast network of community literacy leaders by helping teachers and families support children affected by the conflict and leveraged art and sports to help students envision brighter futures.

Education Resources

  • World Vision’s Measuring Evidence of Quality Achieved (MEQA) digital monitoring and coaching tool enables program staff and local government staff to effectively observe and coach teachers, reading club facilitators, early childhood development caregivers, parents, and others to better support children’s overall learning. MEQA is currently being used in 21 countries, three of which have adopted enhanced observation tools that support coaching for Universal Design for Learning. MEQA is featured in Brookings Tool Finder, which helps to identify digital tools for real-time data collection in education in low- and middle-income countries.