January 27, 2023
All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) has released our Annual Report 2022 Highlights, recognizing our 11th year of implementing and scaling game-changing education technology solutions to increase literacy for children in marginalized or low-resource contexts.
Today, this work is more important than ever. Last year brought its share of challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine. UNESCO estimates more than 1.5 billion learners have been affected by the closure of schools since the start of the pandemic, and that refugee learners lost an average of 142 days of school because of school closures. EdTech innovation has been proven to address barriers to child literacy both in and outside of school and in crisis and emergency situations.
This year is an important one for ACR GCD because it also marks the beginning of the one-year extension of our program. The additional year will allow us to double the creation of accessible digital books, implement two awards for children with disabilities and improve our sign language book production standards.
Highlights of this year’s report include:
- Launching of a revamped ACR GCD website, complete with easy-to-navigate solutions, research, and guides and toolkits to increase literacy
- Updates from our current challenges—UnrestrICTed, Begin With Books and Ready2Read
- Strengthening of engagement with our partners—USAID, World Vision and the Australian government
- How our innovators expanded their work so that all children have the opportunity to read and learn from books in languages they use and understand
- Scaling of EdTech solutions through the Scale and Use prize competition
- Creation of the Child Functioning Module-Teacher Version (CFM-TV), a tool used by teachers to collect data on early grade learners with disabilities
- And more!
We invite you to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, but we also encourage you to look ahead to 2023 and make a difference in the lives of the more than 584 million children worldwide who are waiting for the opportunity to read. If all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which would be equivalent to a 12% cut in world poverty.
As we embark on the final year of our Grand Challenge, we encourage you to explore our solutions and tools and implement innovative solutions into your programming. Consider partnering with us to pilot or scale a solution to improve child literacy outcomes in your community or region. Together, we can create a future in which all children can learn to read.
The ACR GCD Annual Report 2022 is available to read, print or download as a PDF or accessible online format.
by Jamie Brian, All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development
