Every child deserves books: How the Global Book Alliance gets books into children’s hands

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This submission is Part 2 of the panel, Every Child Deserves Books: How the Global Book Alliance Gets Books Into Children’s Hands. In Part 1, we learned about the book supply chain from a high-level approach - what it is and why understanding and strengthening it is vital to improving access to books and education for children. Part 2 of this conversation dives deeper into direct implementation and showcases success stories of how components of the book supply chain have been strengthened through various initiatives and programs.

As highlighted in Part 1, we know that knowledge about strengthening book supply chains is necessary in order for the global community to ensure that all learners acquire key reading skills and make progress on SDG 4. Providing access to books and education, to both teachers and learners, creates more equitable and inclusive learning environments. The book supply chain is a cross-cutting issue that also impacts entire school systems and the abilities of educators to teach in all types of learning settings - including formal and informal.

This panel seeks to address the growing problem of the global book gap. The book gap, as defined by the Global Book Alliance, represents the lack of level-appropriate books in languages children use and understand. There are numerous factors at play that affect the book gap. Around the world, the book supply chain is often not strong enough to adequately supply books to learners. For one, there are not enough high-quality books, in both physical and digital copies, that are in the right language and are also relevant, inclusive, and representative of all learners. In many locations, books are hard to obtain due to inefficient and ineffective supply chains, as well as inappropriate or insufficient use of financing for procurement. These poor practices limit the book supply and increase costs, making books less accessible. The book gap is also widened where there is lacking community engagement from teachers, parents, and caregivers that may not have the information and resources necessary to support learners’ reading skills and maintain student engagement and interest in reading.

This panel will address the critical need for quality, relevant, inclusive, and representative books and other reading and learning materials, which are necessary components to achieve universal access to equitable foundational and literacy skills.

We know that foundational skills are key to improving education, and we can’t successfully teach these necessary foundational skills without books. But, not just any books. Learners need diverse books that are inclusive and representative. It is also vital to think about book collections more broadly and consider what books children need, within their own contexts, in order to learn to read. This panel seeks to offer examples of best practices and advice on how to strengthen the book supply chain at various stages to get books in front of learners, ensure inclusive education practices, work with the publishing sector, and identify further areas for improvement along the book chain. The book chain, and its gaps, is everywhere - lessons learned on the supply chain in these various examples will help participants to learn how to identify the stages of the book supply chain, which areas need to be strengthened, and how doing so will improve education programming.

This panel features four distinct initiatives, each aimed at strengthening the book supply chain through different, complementary approaches. The panel will cover lessons learned about the use of digital materials in underserved language and key lessons to ensure inclusive access and reach marginalized children, such as those who are deaf or blind; the essential components that go into an ideal book collection, including quality, variety, and contextualization to communities; how to support the local book supply chain through local publisher trainings and capacity building; and a highlight of the Global Digital Library, an open-source library for readers everywhere in languages children use and understand.

Each initiative featured on this panel will include its particular successes - including how to replicate and scale best practices - as well as challenges the teams faced during implementation, how they overcame obstacles, and resulting lessons learned.

Each panel will discuss its individual impact on the identified stage of the book chain, as well as how strengthening the book chain positively contributed to access to education and learning outcomes in the local communities. During the discussion portion of the panel, the discussant and panelists together will dig deeper into how strengthening the book chain at-large will help facilitate a more equitable world through improved education and learning environments. Panelists will also discuss how the book chain community has worked together to develop tools, guides, and learning products to spread knowledge and best practices.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Megan Schleicher, DDI Center for Education, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Individual Presentations

• Improving access to books for marginalized learners - Sergio RamirezMena, World Vision Us

• The ideal book collection: Beyond access to include quality and variety - Christabel Pinto, Room to Read; KAREN MUNRO BENTALL, Room to Read

• Working with local private publishers to increase access to quality books - Megan J Thomas, Education Development Center (Edc)

Discussant

• Scott Walter, CODE