In July, Pratham received $9 million in funding to scale up their Read India program from the William and Flora Hewlett and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations--the first organization to be awarded funding from the new partnership between the foundations aimed at scaling up innovative programs to improve the quality of education in developing countries. Previous work by J-PAL and Pratham had proved the effectiveness of the pedagogical methods used in Read India. J-PAL South Asia at IFMR has now been awarded funding from the Hewlett Foundation to evaluate alternative approaches to massively scale up Read India and to examine how similar results are in different districts. The evaluation will also evaluate Pratham's "Reading to Learn" program.

For more information on Pratham's award:
http://www.pratham.org/documents/Pratham%20Hewlett%20Gates
%20Grant%20Release%20Final%20July%205%202007.pdf

To read more about previous J-PAL/Pratham evaluations see The Balshaki program at http://www.povertyactionlab.com/projects/project.php?pid=2 and Information and Community Mobilization program at http://www.povertyactionlab.com/projects/project.php?pid=43