Caitlin Baron

Caitlin Baron is CEO of the Luminos Fund, a philanthropic initiative that has helped 132,611 children experience rich education with inspiring results. Luminos operates classrooms for primary-aged children with a focus on child-centered, activity-based learning, literacy, and numeracy. Caitlin served previously as a leader at Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

Co-Author: Nikita Khosla

Enabling Liberian Children to Become First-Generation Readers in 10 Months

This presentation will deep-dive into the Luminos Fund’s Second Chance program in Liberia as a case study. Since 2016, the Luminos Fund has worked in Liberia to scale up Second Chance, an accelerated learning program that supports out-of-school children (ages 8-14 years) to become literate and numerate within the span of 10 months.

At the Luminos Fund, we work to ensure children everywhere get a chance to experience joyful learning, especially those denied an education by poverty, conflict, and discrimination. To date, Luminos has helped 132,611 children in Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Liberia experience rich education with inspiring long-term results.
This presentation will deep-dive into the Luminos Fund’s Second Chance program in Liberia as a case study. Since 2016, the Luminos Fund has worked in Liberia to scale up Second Chance, an accelerated learning program that supports out-of-school children (ages 8-14 years) to become literate and numerate within the span of 10 months. Per an external evaluation conducted in 2018-19, Second Chance graduates identify 40 correct words per minute at the end of the program on average, up from essentially zero.

In Second Chance, Luminos applies the best global knowledge regarding what’s most effective for first-generation readers and reimagines that for the Liberian context. Through a phonics-centered curriculum, locally developed reading materials, and regularly conducted timed reading assessments, we enable children to become independent readers. Children see themselves in the texts and reading is presented as an integral part of the world all around them.

Additionally, our classrooms combine the rigor of a global, English-language phonics approach with the five-senses, joyful learning of the Luminos pedagogy. We employ an activity-based, child-centered pedagogy that is critical in the holistic development of the child. This ensures our students not only become functionally literate and numerate but also ‘learn how to learn,’ a skill that serves them well when they transition into government schools.

This presentation will explore the key drivers of the model’s success and provide insight into past and current challenges of operating in a post-conflict context like Liberia.