Press Event with USAID, GES and Worldreader

Worldreader has one co-founder in Africa and the other in California; and there are some pretty amazing news to share.  Here’s just two quick (but monumental) stories.  Thursday, Colin participated in a joint press event with USAID and Ghana Education Services in Accra.  Colin, Peter Argo (Deputy Mission Director from USAID), and Stephen Adu (Deputy Director General from GES) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish an alliance for the implementation of the iRead pilot in Ghana. USAID is funding the measurement and evaluation for iRead under the Global Development Alliance Program and the Ministry facilitates the selection and access to the nine schools involved in the pilot.

Mr. Adu expressed his delight at the pilot, recognising that Ghana is leading this project globally.  His hope is that it would facilitate future expansion to cover the whole country.  Similarly, Mr. Argo expressed pride at being able to support the pilot and the coherence with the strategy of USAID to develop new innovative solutions to age-old development challenges.  Colin said it was great pleasure to formally sign these agreements, but more importantly to see the intention to develop this initiative for the future. The acute interest of local media is also indicative that many in Ghana recognise the potential transformative impact this will have on literacy and the education system itself.  Imagine: Ghana could possibly become the country with the highest penetration of e-readers in schools!

And…it’s official!  We’re going to Kenya. David and Zev reached an agreement with Jon and Caren McCormack to provide e-readers to their amazing Kilgoris Project.  Here is a photo of yesterday’s signing ceremony in San Francisco.  We’ll be sharing more news from David and Zev soon including visits with foundations, friends and even a famous author or two.  You can follow them on twitter: @davidrisherWR and @zevlowe to get mini-updates!

Jon and Caren McCormack