SNNPR Government Scales up READ CO Program

Wednesday 6 December 2017

The Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ (SNNP) National Regional State has scaled up the READ Community Outreach (READ CO) Program to newly targeted 50 Woredas and 1,262 schools.

With the aim of improving the reading and writing skills of primary school children in grades one to four, the READ CO program is working in 18 Woredas and 434 schools in Sidama, Hadiya and Wolayta zones of SNNPR.

READ CO’s proven success in helping primary school children to improve their reading and writing skills, coupled with the particular emphasis the regional government has placed on students’ reading skills have catalyzed the official decision to scale up the READ CO program to new target Woredas and schools in the region.

Accordingly, the scale up will cover 389 additional schools in 15 Woredas in Wolayta, 487 schools in 23 Woredas in Sidama and 386 schools in 12 Woredas in Hadiya zones of SNNPR.

Kamal Hossain, Chief of Party for READ CO said, “We are proud the SNNPR government has decided to scale up the READ CO program. This is a testament to the hard work of the entire READ CO team across the country office, field offices and the local community as well as to the place of our work in the Ethiopian education system. Ownership of the program by the government and the community will mean sustainability beyond the life of the program. This is indeed a significant achievement. I want to congratulate everyone who are involved in making this happen”

As part of implementing the scale up, READ Community Outreach provided Level 1 ToT training for 466 (23F) school cluster supervisors, 100 Woreda and zonal education experts and administrators. With technical support from READ CO and 100% funding from the regional government, level II training was also provided to 8,858 (3986F) school and community level participants.