Globally, 64% of 10-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple story.

To combat this trend, Worldreader and Sabre Education have joined forces in their efforts to improve reading skills in early childhood education across Ghana.

For the past 13 years, World Read Aloud Day has highlighted the importance of sharing stories in communities and is celebrated annually in over 173 countries across the globe. 

Worldreader and Sabre Education have marked this year’s celebration with an ambitious declaration of collaboration, premised on the complementary roles the two organisations can play towards enhancing the quality of early childhood education. 

The overall aim is to improve learning outcomes for all 1.6 million kindergarten children in Ghana, especially the most vulnerable.

“We are delighted to be collaborating with such an impactful organisation as Worldreader,” said Sabre Education’s Executive Director Tony Dogbe. 

“Sabre’s vision is to help Ghanaian children succeed by providing them with the best possible early education. Worldreader’s digital reading solutions combined with Sabre’s teacher training model will help move Ghana closer towards achieving the UN sustainability goal of universal access to pre-primary education (SDG 4.2).”

“Our partnership with Sabre Education is designed to optimise reading impact on the children and caregivers we commit to serve.” commented Leslie Tettey, Wordreader’s Regional Director for West Africa.

“Worldreader aims to get children reading so they reach their potential, and with our digital library, BookSmart, there are seemingly no boundaries to accessibility. Complemented by Sabre Education's reach and physical presence in the districts and communities, our partnership represents a force for good, determined to impact the education landscape, particularly in reading and comprehension. We are indeed excited about our collaboration as we celebrate World Read Aloud Day.”'

The main objectives of the partnership are to:

•Leverage digital reading solutions in order to promote reading in schools and homes.

•Build the capacity of stakeholders to ensure efficient and effective delivery of reading services for children.

•Advocate that all kindergarten children, irrespective of gender, physical disability,

creed or ethnicity, have equal reading materials to read to learn.

•Support parental engagement in early education, reading, and literacy, and mobilise

resources for the prioritisation of education.

Worldreader has committed to providing digital material free of charge to teachers and parents, while Sabre Education has pledged to facilitate the distribution of Worldreader’s digital reading material through its teacher training programmes, and promote parental and child utilisation through teacher engagement activities.

Sabre Education has been working for nearly 20 years to transform schools into play-based learning environments by providing quality teacher training and support, and through advocacy around national scaling. 

Worldreader supports reading programmes across the world, and has been working in Ghana since 2010 to support underserved communities with digital reading solutions.