The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and World Vision have announced a request inviting grant proposals from interested organizations for innovative programs with potential to improve reading skills and low literacy rates among primary grade children. Through a multi-year initiative called ‘All Children Reading – A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR)’, the Founding Partners have plans to collaborate to achieve the goal of global action to improve child literacy.
Objectives
The All Children Reading Competition aims to encourage innovative thinking and design to bring new knowledge to the challenge of improving primary grade reading rapidly and at scale in certain countries. Applications from and relating to low- and lower-middle income countries are particularly encouraged.
Funding Availability
It is estimated that US $7,500,000 will be made available for awards under the RFA. The amount of available funding is subject to change. The maximum funding available for a single application is US $300,000 over the maximum two-year period of performance. The Founding Partners anticipate funding approximately twenty-five (25) grants under this RFA. The Founding Partners reserve the right to fully or incrementally fund selected application(s) as well as to partially fund selected application(s). The Founding Partners reserve the right to make no awards at all through this RFA.
Areas of Interest
The funding partners are interested in funding innovations that will result in (1) widespread access to improved teaching and learning materials and (2) better education data to support decision-making, transparency, incentives and accountability; both of which are essential to advance the goal of All Children Reading in the primary grades.
The illustrative areas of interest listed below are not meant to be exhaustive or limiting in any way:
- Innovations in Teaching and Learning Materials to Improve Student Learning
- Support the production of and/or access to language and level-appropriate narrative, expository and instructional materials for emerging and beginning readers and their teachers;
- Support the development/editing/printing of texts of similar difficulty in two or more languages/scripts;
- Address the challenges of materials distribution in developing country contexts;
- Benefit children with special needs and/or learning disabilities;
- Foster parent and community involvement in children reading;
- Support large numbers of teachers in remote locations in their effective and continuing use of new materials;
- Help students, teachers and communities develop high quality materials locally;
- Bridge gaps between school and home and support a community reading culture in contexts where family literacy and school involvement levels are low;
- Innovations in Education Data to Improve Student Reading
- Develop simple approaches to allow school and local level managers to prioritize, collect, analyze and use key education-related data at the school level to improve instruction and learning outcomes;
- Improve school, regional and national level resource planning to improve learning outcomes;
- Consolidate and analyze disparate sources of education data at the local, regional, national and international level;
- Widely disseminate education-related data in easy-to-understand ways to a variety of audiences;
- Deliver data and information to improve teacher preparation and professional development;
- Assist teachers and education officials with rapid and efficient student assessments and teacher evaluations; and
Geographic Restrictions
Applicants, regardless of entity type, may not be from foreign policy restricted countries: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Syria.
Last date for submitting the applications is January 31, 2012.
For more information, visit this link and search by the Funding Opportunity Number for “SOL-OAA-12-000010″
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