ACR GCD seeking Applications for UnrestrICTed Challenge 2020
Deadline: 20 July 2020
The All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) is seeking applications for the UnrestrICTed Challenge 2020 from local and global solvers to scale ICT for education solutions that ensure children with disabilities benefit from language, literacy, and learning support grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at home and at school. Solvers will participate in a collaborative process to co-create forward-thinking ICT for education solutions that demonstrate the highest potential to improve language and literacy for children with disabilities in low-resource contexts.
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Purpose
This competitive, multi-stage challenge will consider ICT solutions that demonstrate the highest potential to dramatically improve language and literacy for children with disabilities at scale. Any solutions selected for implementation will be required to comply with ACR GCD’s evaluation requirements and work with ACR GCD’s monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) partner, School-to-School International.
ACR GCD will identify potential Solvers with recognized expertise to co-create, co-design, and co-invest in the development of best approaches for administering appropriate ICT solutions designed specifically for children with disabilities, their parents, and their teachers in eligible countries.
UnrestrICTed Challenge
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The UnrestrICTed Challenge will address the following:
PROBLEM: More than 93 million children globally have a disability. Of those children with disabilities who reside in countries with high poverty levels, at least 90 percent do not attend school, and fewer girls with disabilities attend school than boys. A lack of suitable transportation and infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, insufficient learning support, and a dearth of quality learning resources prevent children with disabilities from attending or fully participating in school, leaving them further behind their peers’ academic and social development. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these challenges, and deepened the need for quality ICT solutions to support learning for all children in and out of school.
CHALLENGE: ACR GCD seeks to scale ICT for education solutions that will ensure children with disabilities benefit from language, literacy, and learning support grounded in UDL at home and at school. The three focus area-specific goals for the UnrestrICTed Challenge are:
Children have access to and engage with ICT solutions, grounded in UDL principles , to develop language and literacy skills.
Teachers are better prepared to nurture language and literacy skills of children with disabilities through UDL principles and technologies.
Parents and communities have an increased understanding of how to support the language and literacy skills development of children with disabilities, and access to the tools to do so.
Solutions should:
Introduce or build on existing UDL approaches;
Have a substantial impact on or reduce one or more barriers that prevent children with disabilities from learning to read;
Enable or provide for low-cost alternatives to the status quo;
Enhance uptake, acceptability and provide for sustained use of service;
Be focused on multiple disabilities;
Be scalable in low resource settings, specifically the eligible contexts for this Challenge.
To achieve these goals, ACR GCD seeks to co-create, co-design, co-invest and collaborate with innovative organizations (hereafter referred to as Solvers) to leverage forward-thinking ICT for education solutions that demonstrate the highest potential to dramatically improve language and literacy for children with disabilities in the eligible contexts.
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Prize Information
Up to $1 million
Eligibility Criteria
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Public, private, for-profit, non-profit organizations, and disabled people’s organizations, as well as institutions of higher education, public international organizations, non-governmental organizations, U.S. and non-U.S. government organizations, and international donor organizations are eligible under this Challenge Announcement unless otherwise stated in the Opportunities.
Individuals are not eligible to apply.
All organizations must be determined to be responsive to Opportunities under this Announcement and sufficiently responsible to perform or participate.
Eligible Countries
ACR GCD will prioritize EOIs for the following contexts: Nepal, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific Islands, and Rwanda. Other eligible contexts include: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, Malawi, and the Philippines. Solutions that have already been implemented in these contexts are preferred, but Solvers may also propose solutions that were tested in other similar contexts that can be successfully transitioned to scale.
Judging Criteria
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Criteria 1 (Impact): The data and evidence provided indicates that the ICT solution had a significant impact on language and literacy for children with disabilities in the eligible contexts.
Criteria 2 (Scale): The response demonstrates the solution’s unique ability to achieve this impact at a lower price point, with a sustainable business model, and an understanding of any challenges to achieving the desired impact at scale. The response also details how the quality of the solution will not be significantly affected by expansion or widespread adoption.
Criteria 3 (Experience): The response demonstrates the Solver’s contextual and technical understanding, organizational relevance, past performance, and proposes collaborators necessary to dramatically improve language and literacy for children with disabilities at scale.
For more information, visit https://allchildrenreading.org/competition/unrestricted-challenge/