Makhalidwe Athu (“Our Way of Staying”)

• In Event: Innovators Advancing Early Grade Literacy Through Family Engagement and Technology

Proposal

In Zambia, children’s ability to master foundational literacy skills has been inhibited by limited access to reading materials, especially in local languages. Despite recent gains in student reading scores and reading instruction, the lack of supplemental materials in local languages prevents parents and community members from supporting children in reading outside of school. Without these materials, children do not have adequate opportunities to practice reading, and continue to demonstrate poor reading skills. This presentation will show the findings of the Creative Associates International’s innovation project Makhalidwe Athu (“Our Way of Staying”). The objective was to mobilize community members to help author early grade reading materials by submitting their favorite local stories and folktales through SMS message, voice recording or web form. A literacy expert then edited these stories to be grade-level appropriate and parents received them through a series of SMS messages along with comprehension questions to ask their children. This method facilitated parental involvement in their child’s reading and reinforced the importance of practicing reading on a daily basis, while focusing on problems faced within mother tongue instruction and availability of reading materials.

The theoretical framework used within this innovation was mother tongue instruction as a method to improve reading outcomes, along with parent and community engagement in the creation of literacy materials. This follows the work of many researchers as outlined by Ball (2010) which showed that becoming literate and fluent in a learner’s first language is vital for overall language and cognitive development, along with academic achievement. To evaluate the impact of this project, USAID contracted National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation. Data was collected through an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), household survey and learner questionnaires at baseline and end line. The baseline data was collected in November 2015 and January 2016, then the end line data collection will be in January 2017. Baseline analysis found that 58% of students did not have access to reading materials. Thetop two reasons parents reported for difficulties helping their children read was due to their own low literacy levels and lack of reading materials. The Makhalidwe Athu project isworking with approximately 1,200 students and 40 school communities. The project also partnered with local groups such as BreezeFM, BongoHive, University of Zambia, and the Lubuto Library project. The significance of the project was to use SMS texting technology to distribute mother tongue reading materials that were created by and for the communitiesto improve early grade reading skills. This innovation looked past limitations of physical reading materials and worked to find alternative methods to bring literacy to communities.
References
Ball, J. (2010). Enhancing learning of children from diverse language backgrounds: Mother
tongue-based bilingual or multilingual education in the early years, UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/ 001869/186961e.pdf

Author

• Karen Tietjen, Creative Associates International