AREAi emerges one of six finalists for 2024 WISE Prize for Education

Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi) has been named as one of the six finalists of the 2024 WISE Prize for Education.

AREAi joins a group of exceptional organisations from across the world, as the only Nigerian and African entity in this year’s final shortlist of a prize that is dedicated to recognising outstanding, world-class contributions to education.

From a pool of over 427 applications, AREAi’s flagship programme – FastTrack, was selected as a promising solution to bridge learning gaps for literacy and numeracy skills, particularly for disadvantaged children within underserved and rural contexts, including refugee communities across Nigeria.

Leveraging offline, self-assisted technology, FastTrack utilises a digital pen, equipped with audio capabilities, and multilingual instructional materials, to facilitate quality foundational learning instruction resulting in higher literacy and numeracy levels for its beneficiaries.

Since FastTrack’s pilot in 2019, the programme has been scaled widely as an Indigenous solution with significant evidence of impact in improving reading and arithmetic proficiency levels for over 25,000 children across 10 refugee camps.

In recognition of this award, AREAi’s Founder and Global Director, Prince Gideon Olanrewaju, has stated that the team has also witnessed improvements in the socio-emotional skills, well-being, formal school enrollment tendencies, participation levels, and transition rates for these beneficiaries as a result of the FastTrack Programme.

In his words, “We are grateful for this recognition as it is a testament to FastTrack’s incredible potential in providing tailored instructional support, meeting personalised learning needs and enabling further educational access to millions of refugee learners and out-of-school children.”

We remain resolute in its mission to have FastTrack adopted within and across camps and communities across Africa, via collaboration with national and local government agencies as well as local refugee-led or community-based educational organisations.”

Over the next one year, with funding support of over $125,000, capacity building and mentorship from the WISE Team, AREAi will be piloting FastTrack+, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, as it deploys this innovation in new languages and across different contexts.

In closing, the founder also stated: “It is such a delight to be in the running along with six other finalists for the 2024 WISE Prize for Education, which will not only embolden our vision of ensuring access to quality foundational learning opportunities at scale but also put us on the path to sustainable long-term impact.”

The organisation notes the incredible support received and extends great gratitude to the Education Forum and the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) for continuously creating a global and multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate and purposeful action on building the future of education through collaboration and support for programmes such as AREAi’s FastTrack, thus addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges in access to quality and early childhood education.