THE US Agency for International Development partnered with the Department of Education and the National Educators Academy of the Philippines to strengthen early grade literacy development during the Covid19 pandemic.

The collaboration aims to showcase nearly 400 innovative projects from educators in Bicol and the Western Visayas.

Early this month, USAID held a virtual training titled “Instructional Leadership Training: Strengthening Learning Conditions for Early Literacy.”

The training focused on developing literacy leaders who can foster conditions for integrating social and emotional learning, gender equity and social inclusion, and developmentally appropriate practices to support quality literacy instruction.

“As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries and the 60th anniversary of USAID in the Philippines, the US government, through USAID, remains committed to supporting DepEd in its goal to provide children and youth with the necessary skills for their growth and development,” Sean Callahan, USAID Philippines acting mission director, said.

The event featured a virtual poster and video exhibition of project initiatives, a virtual area featuring USAID-supported early grade learning materials, and read-aloud events featuring books in Filipino, English, and mother-tongue languages developed with USAID support.

It also included discussions on literacy leadership, home partners’ literacy programs, school climate, and gender equality and social inclusion.

“The initiatives of the USAID Advancing Basic Education (ABC+) project on early grade reading proficiency and on knowledge-sharing for capacity building provides significant contributions to DepEd’s directive on decisively addressing the challenge of quality on basic education,” DepEd Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said.

“I look forward to the documentation of the presentations and the proceedings of this learning conference to be a readily available reference material for a range of good practices in early grade literacy in basic education,” he added.