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Community Libraries Action Research in Ethiopia and Uganda Review Report Community Libraries Action Research in Ethiopia and Uganda Review Report Prof. Ken Harley This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence Overview With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and as part of its work on the early literacy ecosystem and open licensing, Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) is conducting research into the successful sharing of alternative content creation and distribution models that harness open licensing. One project contributing to this research is the role of community libraries in creating high quality children’s stories written in local languages, and making these accessible with an open licence. NBA’s goal is to contribute to enhancing the availability of children’s books in mother‐tongue languages in Africa, using open licensing. This report by Ken Harley is a review of two projects – one in Uganda and one in Ethiopia. NBA has also created a website, the Early Literacy Resource Network (ELRN), to share information on toolkits and research about open licensing, teacher training, national language and book policies, access and distribution, and key players in early literacy. The resources on the ELRN website gather together work carried out by the major organizations and researchers in this field. Please visit at: http://www.earlyliteracynetwork.org/. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence Cover page photo: Ato Solomon and his grandson. Ato Solomon is a community member who wrote some stories for this project. Fitche community library, Ethiopia, Lisbeth Levey This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................. i Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................................. ii Background ...................................................................................................................................................... ii How the project unfolded in and across the two countries ........................................................................... iii End of project reflections .............................................................................................................................. vii SECTION A: PROJECT AND COUNTRY BACKGROUNDS AND REVIEW TERMS OF REFERENCE ................................. 1 1. Project overview and background ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 The project in contractual terms ............................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Project background: how the CL Project evolved ..................................................................................... 2 2. Review methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Review questions and methodology ......................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Carrying out the review ............................................................................................................................. 4 2.3 Making sense of the data and reporting findings ...................................................................................... 6 3. Language issues and CLs in their country contexts ......................................................................................... 7 3.1 Commonalities across the two country settings ....................................................................................... 7 3.2 Differences across the two country settings ............................................................................................. 7 3.3 Baseline differences across the two countries .......................................................................................... 9 SECTION B: REVIEW FINDINGS AND REFLECTIONS ............................................................................................... 11 4. Uganda ........................................................................................................................................................... 12 4.1 The role of Principal Investigator (PI) in Uganda ..................................................................................... 12 4.2 Project ‘deliverables’: the overall picture ............................................................................................... 12 4.3 The Community Libraries: the planned part of the project .................................................................... 14 4.4 Story translations at UCU: the unplanned, opportunistic arm of the project ......................................... 15 4.5 Inputs and Activities; Outcomes and Impact ........................................................................................... 18 5. Ethiopia .......................................................................................................................................................... 25 5.1 Brief overview of CODE‐Ethiopia and the Community Libraries ............................................................. 25 5.2 Project ‘deliverables’ ............................................................................................................................... 26 5.3 Inputs and Activities: Action research and data gathered ...................................................................... 27 5.4 Outcomes and Impact: CLs’ progress, achievements and impact on early literacy ................................ 29 6. Issues in relation to both countries ............................................................................................................... 32 6.1 Overall comparisons across the two countries ....................................................................................... 32 6.2 Reflection on Peer Review and Quality Assurance .................................................................................. 35 6.3 Possible transferability of methods across countries .............................................................................. 37 6.4 Reflection on replicability and cost effectiveness ................................................................................... 38 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence 7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 39 7.1 The CL project in a nutshell ..................................................................................................................... 39 7.2 What made these achievements possible? ............................................................................................. 41 7.3 Looking ahead .......................................................................................................................................... 42 Appendices ............................................................................................................................................................ 46 Appendix A: The original ‘Proposal for Action Research’ .................................................................................. 46 Appendix B (i): Terms of Reference ................................................................................................................... 47 Proposed External Evaluation Questions ...................................................................................................... 47 Appendix B (ii): Terms of Reference reordered along lines of Inputs and Activities, Outcomes and Impact ... 48 Inputs and Activities: Action research and data gathered in each country ................................................... 48 Outcomes and Impact: CLs’ progress, achievements and impact on early literacy in each country ............ 48 Outcomes and Impact: CLs’ progress, achievements and impact on early literacy across Ethiopia and Uganda .......................................................................................................................................................... 49 Appendix C: Baseline Study: CL differences across the two countries .............................................................. 50 Appendix D: Story Writing in Uganda CLs ......................................................................................................... 52 Appendix E: PI and student comments on the ASb and StoryWeaver platforms ............................................. 53 Where the views come from ......................................................................................................................... 53 Background to difficulties in downloading and uploading stories ................................................................ 53 Appendix F: Uganda PI publications .................................................................................................................. 59 Comment on Papers and Presentations ........................................................................................................ 59 Appendix G: CE website reports, and scholarly
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