Together, let's equip parents, caregivers and early education facilitators with literacy and learning tools to help children thrive.

The Grand Challenge

Despite several decades of focusing on improving access to quality education for all children, learning outcomes continue to remain low, with fewer than half of the world’s school-aged children learning to read on grade level or gaining basic numeracy skills, according to the World Bank. As more than 85 percent of a child’s brain is developed by age 6, a growing body of evidence suggests investing in high-quality pre-primary education—providing young children with the foundational skills needed to support grade-level learning—to be an effective pathway to addressing the global learning crisis. Yet 175 million children globally are not enrolled in pre-primary education during these vital years of their lives. COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges, as millions more children have missed out on early childhood education due to closures of childcare and early education facilities due to the pandemic.

The Big Idea

The Ready2Read Challenge calls on global solvers to propose existing or adapted EdTech solutions and activities that enable marginalized children ages 3 to 6 to build foundational language and literacy skills at home and at school. In addition to targeting key foundational language and literacy skills—including alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, expressive vocabulary, and listening comprehension—solutions should also support parents, caregivers, teachers and/or facilitators with resources and tools to assist in filling gaps in early learning among children, especially due to COVID-19 and other crises.