The five-year regional USAID/LAC Reads Capacity Program (LRCP), implemented by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Juárez and Associates (J&A) and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, seeks to increase the impact, scale, and sustainability of early grade reading (EGR) interventions in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. This is achieved through the development and dissemination of state-of-the-art knowledge resources and the provision of technical assistance to host country governments and other key stakeholders.
The program, implemented from 2014-2019, enhances efforts to boost early grade reading outcomes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Peru, as well as Eastern Caribbean states. Project implementing partners include the Centro de Investigación y Acción Educativa Social (CIASES) in Nicaragua, the Fundación para la Educación Ricardo Ernesto Maduro Andreu (FEREMA) in Honduras, EduConnectJa in Jamaica, and EDUCA in the Dominican Republic. The LRCP also collaborates with the Organization of American States (OAS) in program implementation.
Team Members:
The LRCP team has expertise in evidence-based early grade reading research and practice, strong regional knowledge, and the ability to convene and engage stakeholders across the education sector. We specialize in technical expertise in literacy development, particularly within low-resource and multilingual contexts. The team has experience working in early grade reading interventions in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, and in working with literacy interventions in English, Spanish, French, Creole, and Miskito. Our team members also have expertise in areas including monitoring and evaluation, as well as technical capacity building.
Juan Luis Córdova, LRCP Regional Coordinator, has more than 10 years of experience leading strategy design and senior-level project management in the education...
Josefina Vijil, a leading regional education specialist and researcher, serves as the LRCP Early Grade Literacy Specialist. Dr. Vijil is a social scientist...
Bridget Drury is the LRCP Program Director. Ms. Drury’s more than 15 years of experience working with USAID education projects in the LAC region includes work...
Andrea Coombes coordinates with LRCP national partners on conducting a stakeholder analysis as part of the project’s knowledge sharing objective and to inform...
Pooja Reddy Nakamura is a LRCP literacy specialist and researcher. Dr. Nakamura’s research focuses on improving literacy development in multilingual contexts...
Fernando Rubio serves as LRCP Senior Technical Advisor. Mr. Rubio is a psychologist with extensive experience in educational assessment, program evaluation,...
Rebecca Stone is a LRCP literacy specialist and researcher. Dr. Stone leads the systematic review work for the evidence and resources project objective....
Rebecca Westbrook, LRCP Research Associate, has over 6 years of experience working in literacy development and effective teaching pedagogy in schools in the...
Yesly Contreras, LRCP Technical Coordinator, has over five years of experience in the education and development sectors. Before joining LRCP, Ms. Contreras...
Dr. Analice Schwartz is the LRCP Project Manager at implementing partner Juárez and Associates. She has over ten years of experience researching mechanisms to...