The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Fighting Poverty with Literacy

Photo by Dana Schmidt
(Hewlett Foundation staff)

Sixty million children in India receive help in reading, writing, and basic math from the nonprofit organization Pratham, thanks to a new partnership that the Hewlett and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations launched in 2007.

A $9.1 million grant from the two foundations to Pratham is supporting its Read India initiative, which is working with ten Indian state governments to ensure that four million children between the ages of six and fourteen achieve basic mastery of reading and math by the end of 2009. 

The program is an important non-governmental contribution to India’s efforts to end the cycle of poverty perpetuated by illiteracy and poor education. It is estimated that 50 percent of the children in India cannot read at a minimum level. The initiative already has shown significant gains in reading and math skills among participating students. And, just as important, there are signs that Pratham’s emphasis on literacy is raising it as a priority of the national government.

The grant to Pratham was the first that the Hewlett Foundation awarded through the partnership with the Gates Foundation to improve the quality of education in primary and secondary schools in selected developing countries. This Hewlett Foundation initiative is committed to making a series of grants with $60 million committed by the two Foundations.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.pratham.org/.

Engaging Americans in the World

Photo courtesy of the Center for U.S. Global Engagement

At the Center for U.S. Global Engagement, experts in international relations promote what they call “smart power” − the use of diplomacy and international aid – as a way for America to bolster its place in the world and help make it a better place.

Through its web site, at meetings, and with the dissemination of information, the nonpartisan Center works to improve the use of this power to advance global health, economic prosperity, and international cooperation. For Hewlett, all this is a means to the end of reducing global poverty by reforming foreign aid.

 The Center brings together unlikely allies—from business leaders to non-governmental aid organizations to retired military leaders—to share ideas with policy makers about ways to modernize foreign aid. On the eve of the 2008 presidential election, its web site also worked to create public interest in these issues by supplying extensive information about each candidate’s foreign-policy positions.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.usglobalengagement.org/.