Rewarding ambitious approaches to increasing digital book use to help children’s reading
Millions of children lack books in languages they use and understand. The Digital Books in Action Prize incentivizes digital books & apps usage to improve children’s reading in low resource contexts.
Millions of children have little to no access to books in languages they use and understand, thereby limiting their right to language, literacy, and quality education. For the more than 93 million children globally with disabilities, the shortage of books is even more severe, as resources, if available at all, often lack accessible formats. Research shows that children experience greater reading success when learning in their local signed and spoken languages. Through All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development’s (ACR GCD) awards, innovators have created thousands of digital books and resources in underserved languages to support children’s reading. Many of these books are available on the Global Digital Library and other platforms and apps such as Bloom, eKitabu, Let’s Read, Qysas, Deaf World Around You (WAY), etc. Nonetheless, the presence of books does not mean that they are being distributed or read by children, their parents and teachers. ACR GCD seeks to incentivize the use and uptake of these digital books and apps by children, their families and teachers.
ACR GCD’s broader objectives are to provide digital books through EdTech solutions that enable marginalized children to learn in languages they use and understand. Three goals are associated with this objective:
Goal A: EdTech solutions improve the development, adaptation, and distribution of accessible books in underserved languages.
Goal B: Children have books in languages they use and understand.
Goal C: Parents, communities, and teachers access books through EdTech and use those books to engage children in learning.
For the last 10 years, ACR GCD has funded innovators and partners who delivered against Goal A and have developed 10,000+ digital children’s books in underserved languages. This Digital Books in Action Prize (hereinafter referred to as the “Prize”) is being launched to incentivize innovators to focus on developing and delivering against ambitious scaling strategies that ensure that families, communities, teachers and children use available digital books in languages they use and understand to improve children’s reading (Goals B and C).
ACR GCD will award up to three (3) Prizes of $40,000 to those competitors that achieve the most significant growth in ACR GCD-funded digital book/app use by May 31, 2023. We understand that growth occurs across different dimensions. Therefore, prizes may be awarded in three categories:
More Books Used Category – Highest growth in digital book/app use: This category seeks to incentivize innovators who develop and deliver new strategies to dramatically increase digital book use. To capture both qualitative and quantitative improvement in use, points will be awarded for: highest increase in the number of users, highest increase in the high impact users, highest increase in the percentage of digital views, highest increase in real numbers of digital views/downloads.
More Places Category – Highest percentage increase in geographic reach – This category seeks to incentivize innovators who develop and deliver against new strategies to increase digital book/app use in new provinces, sub-regions, regions, countries and/or with new, underserved communities.
More Partnerships Category – This category seeks to incentivize the development or deepening of high impact and innovative partnerships to get books used (which may include, but is not limited to, film screenings, television broadcasts, social media, non-traditional partners, government, media campaigns, etc.). Points will be awarded to innovators who demonstrate both new partnerships and an attributable increase in use as a result of these partnerships.
2. Objectives
ACR GCD will run the Digital Books in Action Prize for eligible and invited ACR GCD Round 2 & 3 awardees and/or their local partners to increase the use and uptake of ACR GCD-funded digital books and apps by children, their families and teachers. Prize competitors will be incentivized to implement approaches to address barriers to use which may include, but is not limited to, developing or deepening partnerships, content, process, and/or technological improvements, platform enhancement, outreach, dissemination / promotion, advertising, program integration, business plans and funding models, curriculum development or adaptation, training, and incentive programs.
ACR GCD intends to track and learn where competitors are starting from and how they intend to achieve their goals, as well as what pivots and changes competitors implement when initial plans may be insufficient or circumstances change. As part of the opt-in process, competitors should submit:
A notional and appropriate strategy for improving book use and uptake with goals, appropriate indicators of success including tactics identified to achieve the goals. Over the course of the prize, teams are encouraged to modify their strategy, tactics, and implementation plan based on indicator performance and learning. This strategy may be submitted in any format you like (narrative, charts, tables, graphics, deck, etc) and should be no more than five pages.
A workplan to operationalize the strategy. This template should be used to submit the implementation plan)
A notional budget to operationalize the strategy and desired outcome. Competitors should keep in mind that they will be using their own funds and working at risk to operationalize the strategy (because this prize is designed to incentivize unique new behavior, awardees may not use funds from existing awards or scopes of work). There is no guarantee that competitors will win an award. As such, please budget activities that are in your organization’s interest and the organization is capable of sustaining. This template should be used to submit the budget.
These documents are notional and designed to both spur initial thinking among competing teams as well as establish a snapshot for how teams may learn from and evolve their approach. We encourage competitors to spend no more than five cumulative days developing them. They will not be evaluated nor will they be part of the scoring process. Competitors are encouraged to do what works to achieve results rather than remain mired in what may not be working and will not be held to their strategy, workplan, or budget.
3. Competition Structure and Process
The Digital Books in Action Prize is a pay-for-results prize, whose winners will be selected based on an assessment of real results produced by the prize’s deadline (see the complete Digital Books in Action Prize Call, attached). After assessing the submitted evidence and documentation, USAID & ACR GCD will determine winners. Winners will receive a prize award (or awards) that consists of a one-time, no-strings-attached cash transfer directly from USAID. While we encourage that the prize award be used in ways that continue to be of public benefit and in the early grade reading sector, you are under no obligation to do so. The prize does not require ongoing activities after the award. In addition to incentivizing continued scaling and use of the solutions, prize awards are a means of supporting innovators who may be deterred by traditional grant requirements.
Three (3) prizes of $40,000 for a total of $120,000 will be distributed across the 3 categories. ACR GCD reserves the right to adjust the number of prizes and/or the value of individual prizes throughout the competition period. Participants will select the category in which they would like to compete. Participants may select more than one category. Participants are eligible to win multiple awards. Detailed information on each criteria and bonus points, including definitions and verification standards, can be found in Section 7, Prize Criteria. An overview of the anticipated competition timeline is provided below:
4. Submission of Acceleration Prize Opt-In and Documentation
The eligible ACR GCD R2 & R3 awardees elect whether they would like to be considered for the Digital Books in Action Prize by completing the “Digital Books in Action Prize Opt-In” Form and submitting related documentation at www.challenge.gov by 14:00 Eastern Time, August 26, 2022.
For more details about the prize criteria, eligibility, how to compete, the judging process and terms and conditions, please see the ACR GCD Digital Books in Action Prize Call document (enclosed in the “Additional Resources” section).
Awards:- $120,000
Deadline:- 26-08-2022
