GNA – World Vision Ghana (WVG) have been announced as one of the three laureates of the 2021 UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for sustainable development.
Madam Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General, made this announcement ahead of its 41st session of the general conference with the other two laureates being the Media Development Center of the Birzeit University (Palestine) and the Kusi Kawsay School (Peru).
Each of the awardees would receive an award of US$50,000 at an award ceremony to be held on November 19, 2021.
WVG were selected for the award based on its educational intervention programme “Unlock Literacy Project” which is an evidence-based, holistic approach to improving children’s core reading skills.
The jury appreciated the project going beyond traditional literacy projects, being action-oriented and promoting peer-to-peer learning and a whole-community approach.
It also commended its great potential for further scaling up and having a wider impact in the country through cooperation with the formal education sector.
Mr. Dickens Thunde, National Director at WVG, in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency, said improving literacy is central to its child wellbeing objectives.
“This award is an acknowledgement of the hard work and dedication of reading club volunteers, teachers and World Vision staff. We hope it will inspire us all to do even more to help Ghana’s children flourish,” he said.
Mr. Andrew Ofosu-Dankyi, World Vision’s Education Technical Programme Director, in the statement added, “This award is a wonderful endorsement of what we have learned: that when we train all of our teachers on research-based best practices regarding literacy intervention, our children will respond with stronger literacy skills and critical thinking.”
Within the last three years the Unlock Literacy project has reached 32,000 children in 217 schools and in 180 communities in Ghana. The project is reaching 1650 teachers and 780 community volunteers who are supporting 305 after-school reading clubs.
So far, 254,000 copies of 250 titles of supplementary readers have been printed and distributed to 271 community book banks.
GNA