There’s No Place Like Home: Strengthening Home- and Community-based Reading in Djibouti

• In Event: Empowering communities and future advocates to read using digital tools

Proposal

Because parental engagement and support for literacy activities with children at home has a highly significant causal effect on reading success at school, one of the three main components of a donor-funded early grade reading project in Djibouti is building the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs), parent teacher associations (PTAs), school management committees (SMCs), and families to support children’s early grade reading. While this might seem like a relatively simple goal, in fact Djibouti has traditionally seen low levels of family and community engagement in school life as a result of a legacy of colonialism, development challenges, gaps in socioeconomic status, and the urban/rural divide.
This presentation examines the ways that this early grade reading activity has attempted to increase community and family engagement in children’s reading: namely, through: a) social and behavior change communications; b) the promotion of community-driven literacy activities; and c) increased access to books through libraries and community sources as well as through the project’s provision of more appealing texts in school. While access to Information and Communications Technology remains low in Djibouti, particularly in rural or vulnerable households (less than half the population has a mobile phone and only 15% of the population had access to the internet as of 2019), the project has attempted to leverage technology by disseminating messages to parents via both radio and social media (facebook and whatsapp), training local CSOs on Bloom software to create locally developed stories, and by the adaptation of more modern and inclusive free open-source stories available on sites such as Storyweaver, the African Storybook Initiative, etc.
This presentation will share findings from the barrier analysis, data from self-reported surveys conducted among students, and qualitative findings from focus-group discussions. We will also share lessons learned on the importance of finding locally driven solutions and utilizing a gender lens in community- and home-based literacy activities.
Finally, with reference to the conference theme, the presentation will argue that strengthening community and family involvement in reading and education—given the fragile socio-political context in the Horn of Africa—could be construed as a modest but necessary step towards enabling the development of capacities to act, learning to take civil actions collectively, and ultimately serving to make education a catalyst for change.

Author

• Julia Miller, FHI 360