About the Project
iREAD, the Institute for Rural Education and Development, doesn’t wait for a child to reach school and then try to catch them up; it starts earlier than that, ages three to six, before the gap has even opened. For over a decade, iREAD has partnered with rural communities in Uganda and Northern Pakistan to build Early Childhood Development Centres from the ground up: the community donates the land and labour, iREAD brings the architects and training, and local people become the teachers.
Nearly thirty centres, dozens more community-based sites, thousands of children reaching elementary school having already learned how to learn. But numbers don’t move a donor over dinner. A face, personal stories do. So for the Thanksgiving giving season in Canada and the United States, I Directed, filmed and edited six-film series for iREAD: one two-minute film to carry the whole story, and five one-minute films, each walking in through a different door.
Child Transformation
Mother Testimonial
ECD Model
Community Impact
Teacher Training