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All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) will be joining founding partner World Vision at the Education Cannot Wait High Level Financing Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Around the world, 222 million children and adolescents affected by the horrors of war, disaster and displacement are desperate to learn. Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, was established to support the education of those children. But increasing conflict, climate change and the aftermath of COVID-19 are putting untold pressures on economies, education systems and international assistance.
To respond to these alarming trends, ECW has launched an ambitious new strategy and is calling on world leaders, businesses, foundations and high net-worth individuals to provide at least $1.5 billion so it can deliver its 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. In close collaboration with the Governments of Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway, and South Sudan, ECW and Switzerland organized the High-Level Financing Conference to launch efforts to mobilize the resources needed to deliver on ECW’s ambitious plan for the next four years.
The Conference will include a high-level segment on 16 February 2023, inviting political and other leaders to position the educational needs of the 222 million children and adolescents left behind in crises high on the international agenda. It will also see leaders announce financial contributions in support of Education Cannot Wait.
The second day of the Conference 17 February 2023 will be dedicated to a series of roundtable discussions aimed at sharing ideas, experiences, and stories, and promoting the exchange of knowledge and innovation.
Be sure to stop by the App Zone, where ACR GCD Senior Project Manager Erin Williams will be sharing ACR GCD funded EdTech solutions to increase literacy for marginalized children in low-resource contexts, particularly those in crisis and conflict contexts and children with disabilities, such as:
- Feed the Monster, Antura and the Letters and Sema, free evidence-based learning games that help advance literacy for children in low resource contexts in multiple languages
- eKitabu e-reader Apps, which allow you to set up your app, add ebooks, read-ebooks and control how you read and view your books on a device
- Asafeer’s library, an online collection of quality, cost-efficient, and trackable resources and books in Arabic
- Bloom Library is a global collection of books created with Bloom software, which makes it easy to create simple books and translate them into multiple 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
Also, discover more about ACR GCD-funded solutions and awardee activities and projects related to education in emergencies:
- Learn about eKitabu’s Dadaab Refugee Camp Xavier Project/Dadaab Refugee Camp project under Technology for Conflict and Crisis award
- Learn how Asafeer scaled their author training model for quality books in Arabic
- Learn how EdTech solutions can fill gaps and address barriers to literacy for refugee and migrant children in crisis-situations
- Learn how low-cost, short-term interventions leveraging EdTech can increase reading outcomes in as little as five days in this World Bank study that distributed inexpensive smartphones preloaded with Feed the Monster and Global Digital Library
- Learn about ACR GCD-funded solutions that are helping to keep children reading during the Ukraine war
Also, learn how to expand devices beyond the 1 child: 1 device ratio in the video below:
