December 22, 2021
As 2021 draws to a close, we want to take time to celebrate the work our innovators, supporters and partners are doing through All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development to improve reading outcomes for marginalized children in low-resource contexts around the world.
Below are some of our most important highlights of 2021:
- Launching of the Ready2Read Challenge, a competition to scale context-appropriate and effective EdTech solutions that help marginalized children in Nepal, Malawi, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines build foundational language and literacy skills at home and at school.
- Launching of the UnrestrICTed Challenge, a competition to scale Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for education solutions that ensure children with disabilities benefit from language, literacy and learning support grounded in Universal Design for Learning at home and at school in Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Rwanda.
- Promoting key lessons learned as our innovators not only adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic but also expanded their work and efforts.
- Getting closer to publishing our global standards for sign language storybook production to spur more locations and sign languages to support inclusive education.
- Recognizing the growth and scaling of previous ACR GCD innovations and new innovations that build on them, like the scaling of an author training model to engage 34,000+ new authors across the Middle East and the Gabay project, which builds on the ACR GCD funded project in order to help identify and enroll students who are blind, deaf or deafblind in school in the Philippines.
- Celebrating a 10 year partnership with USAID as the global development organization turned 60 this year. Over the past decade, ACR GCD has distributed over 1.7 million learning materials–including more than 1 million books in 50+ underserved languages and materials in sign languages and braille–and grown to be one of the largest innovation funds focused on reading for children with disabilities, with more than $4.5 million invested in inclusive education.
- Watching NASA Astronaut Jessica Meir and and USAID Administrator Samantha Power read Grace in Space, an award winning book about a young girl with a disability who journeys to space. The book was created through the ACR GCD-funded No Lost Generation Summit Tech Prize.
We are grateful for each member of our community and our current awardees: The Asia Foundation, eKitabu, ILC Africa, Rochester Institute of Technology, Save the Children PNG, SIL LEAD, and World Education.
Together, we have extended the reach of EdTech solutions to support literacy and learning for all children around the globe–we look forward to celebrating our work with you again next year!
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