Private sector joins USAID to improve reading instruction in Mindanao

MANILA, Philippines - The Whole School Reading component of USAID’s Mindanao based Education Quality and Access for Learning and Livelihood Skills (EQuALLS2) project received last Aug. 29 and 31, an added financial support boost from two private sector institutions committed to improving teaching and learning for early grade readers in public elementary schools in Mindanao. Petron Foundation contributed P21.5 million ($500,000) to advance the project’s teacher training activities, while National Book Store Foundation donated seven libraries to be awarded to model reading schools from 7 divisions of Regions 9, 12 and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). National Book Store Foundation donated libraries contain two bookshelves of 500 brand-new locally published picture books, area mats, tables and chairs and are each valued at P60,000 ($1,400).

USAID’s Whole School Reading Component is focused on improving elementary school teachers’ ability to teach the main component skills for reading — including phonemic awareness, phonics instruction or decoding and word recognition, vocabulary knowledge, fluency and reading comprehension — while also assisting with the development of appropriate low-cost reading instructional materials. Teachers are also trained to use reading assessments such as the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) and the Early Grade Reading Assessment to better inform their daily teaching practice. To date, The Whole School Reading component of the EQuALLS2 project has trained 945 public elementary school teachers from 53 schools and reaches more than 35,000 students.

Since 2001, USAID has promoted the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model which breaks with traditional development assistance approaches and sets forth a new way of doing business. Alliances are cultivated with the philosophy that social and economic conditions in poor and transitional countries are improved in more effective and sustainable ways when public and private sectors work together. While foreign donor programs often provide a short-term injection of greatly needed resources, long-term value and impact of outside resources can be effectively maximized when they are used to leverage additional resources from host country private sector business partners. The formation of public-private partnerships has proven to be an effective strategy for foreign donors to join hands with host country government and business partners to address the staggering price tag and challenges associated with economic and social development assistance needed by developing countries like the Philippines.

The EQuALLS2 Project under the leadership of the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) has successfully embraced the GDA model and during the last five years has leveraged over $38 million cash and in-kind private sector resources to support education improvement in Mindanao. This remarkable achievement was realized through the development of several public-private partnerships (PPP) with US businesses such as Brothers Brother Foundation and Microsoft Foundation and Philippine-based businesses such as Petron Foundation and National Book Store Foundation, Inc.

In addition to the $.5M grant provided to EQuALLS2 Project by Petron Foundation last Aug. 31, the USAID and Petron Foundation partnership committed to a dollar to dollar match, contributed P53.75 M ($1.25 M) for a total of P107.5 M ($2.5 M) for the construction of 120 new classrooms and refurbishment of 480 existing classrooms across targeted Mindanao communities from 2006 –2011. To date, Petron Foundation has generously contributed a total of P75.25 M ($1.75 M) to the project’s education improvement efforts in Mindanao.