AREAi wins 2024 UNESCO Confucius International Literacy Prize

By Agatha Emeadi

Aid for Rural Education Access initiative (AREAi), a non-profit organisation, has won the UNESCO Confucius Literacy Prize 2024 for its outstanding foundational learning programme based on the recommendations of an international jury. The UNESCO Confucius Literacy Prize is sponsored by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and recognises contributions to functional literacy and leveraging technology for literacy development. This annual prize award, which carries an endowment of US$ 30,000, a medal and a diploma, rewards outstanding individuals, governments and NGOs, working to promote literacy for rural adults and out-of-school young people, particularly women and girls. The award was presented at a global award ceremony organised by UNESCO in Yaounde, Cameroun on September 9, 2024, to celebrate International Literacy Day. 

In his acceptance speech, CEO and founder of AREAi, Gideon Olanrewaju, noted that this global award is another timely recognition of the incredible work the NGO does across its multidimensional programmes.

He said: “Being awarded as a UNESCO International Literacy Prize Winner would not be possible without the support of a vast network of partners, teachers, government stakeholders and global sponsors, who have believed strongly in the power and potential of our programme to transform lives through literacy and language development. From 1500 beneficiaries in a small pilot intervention in 2021 to over 25,000 beneficiaries across 10 refugee camps and communities in Nigeria, AREAi’s results with FastTrack show glaringly that multilingualism was pivotal in advancing foundational skills at home and within schools.

Also represented at the award ceremony, the Director of Programmes, Edidiong Anthony Simeon, also expressed extreme delight for the feat.

“We are deservingly recognised for the work we have done with FastTrack. Our programme, FastTrack, leverages the power of bilingual instruction and trans-languaging to enhance the provision of and access to quality multilingual literacy instruction to thousands of out of school children and refugee learners across rural communities and internally displaced persons’ camps across Nigeria. We cannot wait to do more to reach more beneficiaries and even scale into other countries.

The organisation noted the incredible support the programme had received from notable national and international partners, including the Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and others.

AREAi joined a group of five other organisations that are championing outstanding literacy programmes from Ghana, Indonesia, Egypt, Austria and Panama, as laureates of this years’ International Literacy Prize and are awarded on this years’ International Literacy Day.