UTSA Awarded $13 Million to Help Improve Children’s Literacy in Africa
SAN ANTONIO-(Business Wire)-September 19, 2009 - For the second time in five years, The University of Texas at San Antonio’s College of Education and Human Development (COEHD) has been selected to provide educational materials and teacher training to improve literacy rates of children on the African continent.
The three-year, $13 million cooperative agreement between COEHD and the Republic of Malawi is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and is the largest amount of funding COEHD has received to date. USAID provides economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide that supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy.
With a population of 14 million, Malawi, a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, is among the world’s least developed and most densely populated countries. The life expectancy rate is 43 years of age and nearly one million residents suffer from HIV/AIDS.
The project “Read Malawi” will involve more than a dozen faculty and graduate students across five disciplines working together over the next three years to provide five million books for children in grades 1-3. Additionally, COEHD faculty members will be training teachers, principals and Malawian communities to support the educational improvement efforts in one of the poorest countries in the world.
“Once written and developed, the textbooks will be designed and printed by businesses in Malawi, therefore strengthening and expanding the country’s infrastructure and keeping the majority of the funding in country,” said Betty Merchant, dean of the UTSA College of Education and Human Development.
UTSA’s efforts in Malawi are being led by Misty Sailors, UTSA Associate Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching. Sailors returns to Africa, where she was the principal investigator on UTSA’s first agreement with USAID in 2005. The Ithuba Writing Project was a $5 million effort that provided approximately 2 million books for children in grades 4-6 in South Africa.
The “Read Malawi” project will provide 120 different titles of books in both English and Chichewan, the native language of Malawi to 1,000 of the country’s 5,000 public schools. The Malawian government began free primary education 10 years ago and has seen an increase in the number of children attending schools. Average classrooms range in size from 120-150 students per teacher.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Texas and the second largest of nine academic universities and six health institutions in the UT System. As a multicultural institution of access and excellence, UTSA aims to be a premier public research university providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
UTSA serves more than 29,100 students in 64 bachelor’s, 47 master’s and 21 doctoral degree programs in the colleges of Architecture, Business, Education and Human Development, Engineering, Honors, Liberal and Fine Arts, Public Policy, Sciences and Graduate School. Founded in 1969, UTSA is an intellectual and creative resource center and a socioeconomic development catalyst for Texas and beyond. More information on UTSA can be found online at www.utsa.edu
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