Dive Brief:
- The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation are partnering with XPRIZE to offer $7 million in prizes to boost adult literacy innovation.
- A global competition will challenge developers to create scalable mobile applications that can help adult students make significant progress in basic literacy within a 12-month field testing period.
- Teams will have 18 months to create their apps before finalists move on to the field testing round, after which cities will vie for $1 million earmarked for the community that sees the greatest success in recruiting large numbers of adult learners to download and use the apps.
Dive Insight:
The competition announcement cited data that 36 million adults in the United States do not have basic literacy skills, meaning they cannot read or write beyond elementary school proficiency. Part of the impetus behind the competition design is to innovate beyond the classroom. Like massive open online courses were designed to reach any learner anywhere, these apps will be designed to harness the power of the internet to transcend physical needs for classrooms and teachers, bringing basic literacy education to adults where they are. Offering $7 million in prizes among developers and participating cities could provide the incentive the adult education market needs to invigorate and diversify its impact.