Guyana has just launched a new mass media campaign called “Read. Play. Love”, featuring the nation’s national leaders and heroes, focused on promoting early childhood education. It encourages parents of children under 5 to start modelling pro-educational behaviors for their children at home by reading to them.
In the last few years, Guyana has made significant progress in improving access to education at all levels. However, the quality and equity of early childhood education services remains a challenge.
Poverty, nutritional deficiencies, combined with inadequate care and learning opportunities have denied more than 100,000 children across Guyana to achieve their development potential.
The campaign, based on three pillars of early childhood education aims to raise the literacy rates in the hinterland and riverine regions to be in-line with the national average of 88.5%.
This initiative was financed in part by the Global Partnership for Education, which is currently helping Guyana with a US$1.7 million grant aimed at improving literacy and numeracy outcomes for children.
By improving early childhood education opportunities, Guyana’s ministry of education expects that children can better prepare for learning in school, reach better education outcomes, and have a chance for a better future.