The Mozambican Ministry of Education has made significant efforts in recent years to improve the quality of their education system and boost their early grade reading outcomes. However, the Mozambican education system still struggles with large classroom sizes, a scarcity of educational materials, and low reading outcomes in the early grades. In 2015, World Education began its partnership on the Community Library Program (CLP) with Peace Corps (PC) Mozambique to address these challenges. From 2015-2018, World Education provided literacy training, technical support, logistics, and monitoring and evaluation services for the CLP.
The overall goal of the CLP was to improve early grade reading outcomes through literacy activities and services, as well as to strengthen parental and community engagement in education. The program aimed to increase the quantity of time children practice reading outside the classroom, which has shown to be a crucial factor for enhancing reading outcomes in the early grades. In the CLP, Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) received training, books, materials, and support to begin small community libraries with a focus on sustainability and counterpart training. Each Community Library promoted early grade reading activities through service-learning activities and youth leadership development opportunities.
World Education trained PCVs and their counterparts in literacy and community library, in addition to selecting books, distributing starter library kits, providing technical support in literacy activities, and conducting high-level evaluation services using both the early grade literacy assessment tool and other evaluation tools designed for PCVs and their libraries. World Education also used mobile data collection to track CLP progress and provide technical support to libraries throughout Mozambique.
World Education strives to build lasting relationships with partners across diverse geographic regions and technical sectors to produce better education outcomes for all.
