Reading Through a Pandemic

Experts warn that 1 in 4 students in the U.S. are facing digital obstacles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, reading loss mostly pertained to summer months and the backslide of literacy rates that children experience being away from the classroom for longer periods of time. Over a year into the pandemic, educators, community leaders, activist, and families are all deeply concerned with similar distance learning challenges and they are brainstorming ways to combat reading loss due to the new norm of learning in the midst of a pandemic.

World Vision is proud to announce the launch of a new partnership with Worldreader, a global leader in the education space. For the first time in their organization’s history, they have created a literacy program for children in the U.S.

Worldreader has developed the Keep Children Reading (KCR) application, a literacy program designed to encourage vulnerable elementary-age children to keep reading – a pivotal tool especially for children who are learning from home during the pandemic. The goal is to engage children and parents with simplicity through the phones they already have, with the KCR application right at their fingertips. Families will have access to a digital library of over 400 culturally competent books with a newly featured book made available weekly. Once a child is logged into KCR, they can access age-appropriate books from U.S. and international publishers. Directly following each story, parents can participate in three fun activities to help reinforce learnings and incorporate play into the session. Families also have the option to choose from several different languages, encouraging parents and caregivers to engage comfortably in reading with their child (Spanish, Chinese, etc.).

World Vision has worked for decades to get children's books into the hands of families who normally lack access to them. Now, we are aiming to equip 5,000 students and parents with a 40 week digital subscription to the Keep Children Reading application and provide instant access to a vast home library. Over the next 90 days, we will launch this partnership in a dozen cities across the country to include both rural and urban areas. With so many challenges that parents and children are facing during the pandemic, the moments where they get lost in a book together will prove to be priceless.