Chemonics: Books ensure continued education for children with disabilities in Tajikistan

Third-grade student, Umarjon, and his teacher, Firuza Abdullaeva, work closely together to ensure Umarjon continues to read if he cannot participate in class due to his illness.

Third-grade student Umarjon from School #5 in the Bobojon Gafurov district in Sughd suffers from a serious disease that often prevents him from attending class. The children’s books provided by the USAID Read with Me project to Umarjon’s school have been vital to supporting his uninterrupted education.

“When Umarjon moves or sits for too long, he struggles with physical pain and tires quickly. To help calm him and overcome his pain, I read to him from the donated books delivered by his teacher,” says Umarjon’s mother Sitora.   

Umarjon says that reading books makes him very happy. “I like when my teacher brings colorful and interesting books, especially when I am feeling sad. I enjoy reading and discussing the stories with my Mom and teachers,” says Umarjon. 

Istambonu Khidirova is the school librarian at Umarjon’s school. She received training from the USAID Read with Me project and now facilitates in-class and out-of-school reading activities for teachers, students, and parents. Both Umarjon’s teacher, Firuza Abdullaeva and Istambonu noted, “We see Umarjon’s reading progress and his motivation to read more books. Sometimes he even participates in school activities, which is a great achievement for everyone.”

Fourth-grade student Mehrona (in front) performs a national Tajik dance at a school event dedicated to Literacy Day.

Similarly, Mehrona from School #62 in Istaravshan in Sughd is a 4th grade student with disabilities who benefited from USAID Read with Me interventions focused on inclusive education. Worried about her daughter’s orthopedic impairment, Mehrona’s mother kept her at home rather than learning at school.

Mehrona’s teacher, Dilrabo Mirsharopova, benefited from USAID Read with Me modern pedagogy trainings and understood that regardless of her physical challenges, Mehrona would benefit from high-quality inclusive instruction and interventions. Seeing Mehrona’s potential, Dilrabo brought several books to Mehrona’s home that were donated by the Read with Me project. Mehrona enjoyed these books so much that she soon began visiting the school library herself and began attending classes not long after. Dilrabo’s involvement enabled Mehrona to succeed in the core curriculum and ultimately become the best student in the class.

“Books are the reason I love going to school,” says Mehrona, proudly. “I already read 35 of the USAID Read with Me books and want to read all of the books in our library by the end of the year. I like participating in class and out of school activities, and even join in dancing and games. Everyone liked my dancing performance.”

FH: New Community Library Lends Hope and Opportunity

In a small community in Cambodia, 10-year-old Hoo Ponloeu spends much of her free time reading books with her friends in the new community library. The library has become a refuge from school and her home, where she lives with her parents and six siblings. It has become a place where she can improve her reading skills and teach her friends. It’s become a place where she can have fun, make new friends, and learn new ideas.

“My friends and I used to spend our free time outside of school to play,” she says. “Now we come here to study and read books together. I am very happy and enjoy reading books and stories.”

But this place of refuge and learning only recently came into Hoo Ponloeu’s life.

After entering her community, FH organized a meeting with local leaders and parents to discuss the benefits of engaging children in reading activities through after-school children’s clubs.

The leaders and parents were so inspired that after attending the meeting, they decided to renovate an old club building and build a new library room for their children.

Local leaders led the project and enlisted the help of community members to build the library. Parents even helped provide some of the construction materials, alongside FH’s contribution. With their motivation to provide this learning space for children in the community, it only took seven days to complete.

The library was aptly named “Mohachorkchey,” meaning “very successful.”

After it was built, volunteer teachers filled it with books provided by FH, and set up a schedule to facilitate and teach in the children’s club six days out of the week. Many young girls like Hoo Ponloeu come to the library regularly. Not only are they increasing their knowledge and improving their reading skills, but they are also nurturing their creativity and building close relationships with their peers.

Parents in the community are happy to see the wonderful impact the new library has had in their children’s learning.

Sister Heng Mom, Hoo Ponloeu’s mother, said, “Before we had this library, my child liked to spend lots of time playing, she lacked [confidence], never paid attention to her [studies], and her reading skills were poor. But since having this library, my daughter reads books every day … I’m very happy to see her improving and gaining more confidence.”

Local leaders are grateful as well.

“I am very happy that FH Cambodia encouraged people in the community to understand the importance of reading, and that [the community] collaborated to build this library,” said Mr. Seng Kimsong, the village chief. “It really helps the children have an opportunity to read books and it develops their reading habits and knowledge.”

FH is committed to a wide range of education interventions that impact children during their first nine years of life. It is our goal to help children reach their God-given potential through these targeted interventions that not only bring holistic development to children in the first five years of life, but also cognitive gains for improved literacy and numeracy, as they begin their educational path in the first three years of primary school.

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Juarez & AIR: Building education systemwide self-reliance in Latin America and the Caribbean

By LAC Reads Capacity Program

A key element of the 2018 U.S. Government Strategy on International Basic Education is the road to self-reliance. To achieve self-reliance, capacity and performance of the education system must be prioritized.

 The five-year regional USAID/LAC Reads Capacity Program (LRCP), implemented by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Juárez and Associates (J&A) and financed by USAID, focuses on fostering capacity, sustainability, and self-reliance of early grade literacy (EGL) interventions in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. The program realizes this through leading workshops, developing innovative solutions to national and regional issues around literacy, and providing technical assistance to host country government and stakeholders to improve EGL opportunities and outcomes for the LAC children.  The program works in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Peru, as well as Eastern Caribbean states.  

In 2018, LAC Reads Capacity Program led 3 national conferences and 4 workshops on pre-reading and pre-writing in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Over 500 members participated in the conferences and over 150 participants in the interactive workshops, including Ministry staff, local key stakeholders, academics, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

As capacity building is a core element of the USAID/LRCP program, the workshop provided participants with fundamentals on early grade literacy methodology, pre-reading and pre-writing strategies to use in the classroom, teacher monitoring, evaluation and support methods, and innovative pedagogical approaches.

To assess the capacity built and the quality of learning from the workshop, a pre-test and a post-test was administered to all participants in each country. The surveys included workshop expectations, four technical content questions aligned to the workshop’s objectives, and how to apply their learnings to their work.

Participants were eager to learn new pre-reading and pre-writing methodologies and evaluation methods. A participant from the Ministry of Education in Guatemala shared in their pre-test, “Nuevas metodologías para orientar y sensibilizar a los docentes y autoridades en la forma más apropiada, pertinente e interesante para desarrollar habilidades” (New methodologies to guide and sensitize teachers and authorities in the most appropriate, pertinent and interesting way to develop skills). Participants from Honduras looked forward to learning about pedagogical strategies that could be implemented in classrooms and early childhood education (ECE) centers to support pre-reading and pre-writing skills.

The technical content questions included four qualitative, open ended questions with the purpose to better understand participant learning as a result of the workshop. The question, “What are the characteristics of a successful methodology to promote pre-reading and prewriting skills for young children?” yielded more specific and actionable post-survey responses. In Honduras participants’ post-survey responses emphasized concrete characteristics, such as taking individual needs and differences of children into account. In the Dominican Republic, a participant from UNIBE/Proyecto Leer described a successful methodology for promoting pre-literacy skills in a similar way: “Que atienda la diversidad en el aula [por] instrucción diferenciada” (That it addresses the diversity in the classroom to differentiate instruction). Other participants from Guatemala and Honduras highlighted the need for playful activities, print-rich environments, active participation, the importance of verbal expression and story dramatization.

When asked to “Describe an effective practice and ineffective practice that supervisors use to monitor and provide feedback to teachers,” participants revealed that teachers should receive more on-going support and modeling of pre-reading and pre-writing practices to improve their implementation. A MINERD participant in Guatemala wrote, “Es importante que los supervisores participen en los talleres con los docentes para que luego puedan hacer los acompañamientos y monitoreos con propiedad” (it is important that supervisors participate in the workshops along with the teachers so that they can then support and monitor them properly).

Though capacity building is commonly administered through workshops in USAID-funded international education projects, it is critical to ensure that the capacity building trainings is truly effective through evidence-based results. Through the regional pre-reading and pre-writing workshops, USAID/LAC Reads Capacity Program aimed to measure participant knowledge before and after the workshop, as well as to measure the impact of the training on participant knowledge. The project is currently following up with stakeholders who attended the workshop to understand the behavioral and organizational based impact to validate that the participants are gaining the capacity necessary to create sustainable, systemwide self-reliance to improve EGL outcomes and opportunities for LAC children.

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