Facebook is pleased to announce a Global Literacy & Accessibility Challenge. At Facebook, they strive to build communities across the globe and bring the world closer together. To do so, they need to reduce the barrier for everyone to participate, regardless of their backgrounds and abilities.
The Challenge is open to inviting the academic community to respond to this call for research proposals to better understand and address global literacy and accessibility issues. Grant awardees will be expected to contribute to the field of literacy and accessibility through qualitative or quantitative research.
Table of Contents
Who May Eligible:
Anyone, across the globe, can participate, regardless of their backgrounds and abilities.
How to Apply & Competitions Rules:
To win the Challenge, you need to complete the information and upload the required materials through the given link: https://research.fb.com/programs/research-awards/proposals/global-literacy-accessibility-challenge-request-for-proposals/#Apply
Applicants should submit a two-page proposal outlining their intended research and a budget overview of how the funding will be used. Additionally, participants need to submit a research timeline with quarterly milestones.
- A summary of the project (1-2 pages) explaining the area of focus, a description of techniques, any relevant prior work, and a timeline with milestones and expected outcomes.
- A draft budget description (1 page) including an approximate cost of the award and explanation of how funds would be spent
- Curriculum Vitae for all project participants.
Rules:
- The novel, scalable methods for assessing individual or population literacy levels.
- Understanding the experiences and challenges associated with literacy issues, eg learning disabilities or barriers due to English as a second language.
- Understanding the social, structural, and technology issues that prevent people from improving literacy skills.
- Understanding the impact of literacy skills on individuals and society.
- Digital, social technologies used to improve literacy level, especially, closing the gender gap in literacy rate.
- Design and development of technologies to elevate the literacy barrier, preferably with a focus on social and AI technologies.
Benefits:
They will award four research awards.
- Awards will be made up to $30K USD per proposal for projects up to one year in duration beginning August 2018.
- Successful proposals will demonstrate innovative and compelling research that has the potential to significantly deepen the scientific understanding of literacy issues and lower the socio-technological barriers for people with limited literacy skills.
- Award amounts will be determined at the sole discretion of the evaluation committee.
- Participants will be required to demonstrate milestone completion and present their research results at the sixth-month mark (January 2019).
- Awards will be made up to $30K USD per proposal for projects up to one year in duration beginning August 2018.
- Representatives from each awarded project will be invited to a workshop with other participants in November 2018 to share preliminary results and are expected to attend an evaluation meeting in late January 2019.
- Opportunities for the second round of funding will be determined at the January meeting.
- Travel costs to Menlo Park CA, USA should be included in the proposed budget.
- Award recipients will be listed on the Facebook Research website and will be encouraged to openly publish any findings from their work as well as make any code available as open source.
Application Deadline:
The Global Literacy & Accessibility Challenge submission period will close on July 25, 2018, 11:59 pm PST. Successful awardees will be notified by email in early August 2018.
