Since its founding in 2016, Abako has worked with schools to improve student learning by implementing teacher-generated academic projects. Those projects varied in scope and implementation time. Among them were textbooks for middle schools, motors skills for pre-K children, math skills for Mayan children, and language classrooms for university students. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed, by the power of ten, a reality that affects many children in marginalized communities: a two-tier education system—one for those with resources and one for those in the margins.
The pandemic left many children vulnerable, out of school, and without digital platforms to continue their education. Thousands of children had no electricity, computers, cell phones, cell data, cell signal, and no one to teach them at home. As a result, teachers grappled with learning, relearning, and improvising new ways of teaching while seeing their students' learning sink under the mantle of systemic neglect. Our current efforts focus on helping children reenter classrooms by providing and re-engaging learning through libraries. As schools navigate the bumpy off-ramp out of the pandemic, children will need a safe space to learn, imagine, create, and dream.
In 2021, Abako joined the worldwide efforts to rescue an entire generation of children to recover, catch up, relearn, and continue their education. Our work focuses on foundational literacy and reading skills in basic education in underserved communities in India, Mali, and Mexico. Using sound research and school libraries as our guide, we provide children with a rich environment to develop language while supplying teachers with tools and resources to improve literacy and reading.
