Educational interventions to promote literacy in Kenya

Over this past summer, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in Encouraging Multilingual Early Reading As a Groundwork for Education (EMERGE), a project conducted by the World Bank and our own Dr. Lia Fernald. With funding from the Augustus Oliver Brown Fellowship, I was able to travel to Kisumu, Kenya to collect and analyze baseline data.

The study focuses on providing different interventions to randomly selected children that have yet to start grade-level schooling. These interventions aim to improve literacy and cognitive function, and their efficacy will be evaluated over the next few years. I hope to see this project develop over the next few years as I continue working on it throughout my MPH program.

The experience and my education at UC Berkeley have gone hand in hand; without the preparation in both methods and critical analysis from my public health classes, I would not have been able to successfully contribute to this research project. Similarly, the experience abroad has added a new depth of understanding and application to each of my classes, and I am so thankful for the hands-on, self-directed learning that makes UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health so unique.