The top prize win reflects Building Tomorrow’s contribution to increasing literacy levels in East Africa.
(WASHINGTON) September 8, 2025 – The Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program announced today—on International Literacy Day—Building Tomorrow as the 2025 International Prize awardee. Established in 2013, the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program recognizes organizations in the United States and abroad that provide exemplary, innovative, sustainable, and replicable strategies to promote literacy and reading. The International Prize specifically honors one recipient per year for their contribution to increasing literacy levels in a country other than the United States. The prize includes a cash award of $50,000. Building Tomorrow was first honored by the Literacy Awards Program in 2023 as a Successful Practices Honoree, and is now a top prize winner in 2025.
Building Tomorrow delivers community-powered learning to underserved primary school-aged learners in East Africa, combating a learning crisis in which nearly nine out of 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read a simple text by the age of 10. Building Tomorrow’s solution is a signature community-based approach to literacy and numeracy called Roots to Rise, pioneered in 2018 and inspired by the Teaching at the Right Level methodology. Roots to Rise centers proximate leaders as implementers, with lessons led in school by trained teachers and in community settings by trained Community Education Volunteers (CEVs). Since 2015, Building Tomorrow has recruited over 20,000 CEVs and enrolled over 800,000 learners in transformative Roots to Rise lessons, bringing nearly two-thirds of learners to grade-level proficiency, enabling them to thrive.
“This recognition is an incredible validation of Roots to Rise and the progress thousands of volunteers and teachers have helped hundreds of thousands of learners register,” said Joseph Kaliisa, Co-Founder and Country Director of Building Tomorrow. “This further fuels our momentum as we work with the Ministry of Education and Sports of Uganda to scale Roots to Rise through government channels.”
Co-Founder and Chief Dreamer George Srour added, “It has been a privilege to be part of the Literacy Awards Program’s community of honorees since 2023, and now to be honored with a top prize amongst this extraordinary portfolio of recipients is incredibly humbling. We reflect on this accomplishment in part by acknowledging that none of us can achieve the collective goal of literacy and numeracy for all children alone, and we hope this award can help shed light on and catalyze collaboration around the power of community education, volunteerism, and empowering proximate leaders in our education solutions.”
Building Tomorrow has been active since 2006 in Uganda and has started operations in Rwanda in 2025. Building Tomorrow’s goal is to reach 5 million learners by 2029.
ABOUT BUILDING TOMORROW
Founded in 2006, Building Tomorrow supports community-powered foundational learning in East Africa. Through the organization’s signature Roots to Rise (R2R) literacy and numeracy program delivered in classrooms and community settings, Building Tomorrow has enrolled more than 800,000 learners since the start of the program. Building Tomorrow’s work is powered by a team of over 20,000 Community Education Volunteers, in partnership with teachers and local and national-level stakeholders. Building Tomorrow is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Jyl Strong
Building Tomorrow
jyl.strong@buildingtomorrow.org
317-632-3545
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