Unlock Literacy is an early-grade literacy program implemented through schools and community groups to improve reading fluency and comprehension. Limestone Analytics was contracted to conduct an economic analysis of World Vision Canada’s investments in the Unlock Literacy program model, encompassing cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA).
Limestone prepared a desk review of the Unlock Literacy program model, and a complementary literature review focused on education and literacy interventions and their impacts. From this, Limestone identified the major expected impacts of Unlock Literacy and developed a methodology to quantitatively estimate those. Limestone then constructed spreadsheet-based analytical models to estimate the costs and benefits of World Vision Canada’s investments in 67 implementations of Unlock Literacy across 28 countries between 2019 and 2021.
Figure. Child-participation estimates for World Vision Canada-funded Unlock Literacy implementations (by country).
A key component of this analysis was the application of data from a 10-country impact evaluation of the Unlock Literacy program. Limestone delivered a final report to synthesize its analysis, highlighting the scope of the investments in Unlock Literacy (more than 290,000 children reached), the estimated gains in learning per student and across these investments, the costs per equivalent year of schooling gained, and the cumulative and net social benefits of these investments.
Limestone’s analysis estimated that WVC-funded investments in Unlock Literacy generated learning gains equivalent to nearly 2.5 additional years of schooling for each participating child across all implementations, at a cost of $63 (USD) per equivalent year of schooling. The net social return on WVC’s Unlock Literacy programming was estimated at more than $281 million (USD), yielding more than $7.00 in social benefits for every $1.00 invested.
Figure. Present value of benefits and costs of World Vision Canada-funded Unlock Literacy implementations.
These results can be found in World Vision Canada’s 2023 Annual Report.
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