Squiggle Park has struck a partnership with the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, which will place the company’s edtech product in some of the most disadvantaged schools in Canada.

The Halifax company’s online games, which help children to learn to read, are now used in 3,000 schools, concentrated in North America but including such markets as Oman and China. And the company recently received approval from the Build in Canada Innovation Program, which will provide $500,000 to an educational body that adopts the technology.

Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Julia Rivard Dexter said in an interview the deal with the Indigo Foundation is important because it will get the Squiggle Park technology into schools that often can’t afford such resources.

“Sometimes it’s hard to reach the kids who need it the most,” said Rivard Dexter. “So this helps Squiggle Park to enter schools that lack the funds to buy supplemental tools. … and a lot of them do. School budgets these days are so tough.”

An offshoot of the Halifax web development company Norex, Squiggle Park has developed a series of games that help children from preschool to Grades 3 or 4 learn to read. The company says children using the games learn to read in one-fifth of the time of traditional lessons, and it is especially helpful in teaching children who lag their peers.

Teaching Tech to First Nations Children

The partnership with the Indigo Foundation began when Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books and Music, approached Squiggle Park out of the blue to say how much she loved the product.

“We got a call from Heather Reisman to say that she tried Squiggle Park with her grandchildren and they really loved it,” said Rivard Dexter. “That was really her introduction to Squiggle Park. Then two weeks later she visited her grandchildren again and Squiggle Park was all they were playing. The last time we met, she decided it would be the perfect product to put into her schools.”

The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation is dedicated to putting books and educational resources into schools. This year it will help 30 Canadian schools in disadvantaged areas, five of them in Atlantic Canada. Since 2004, the foundation has committed more than $25 million in funding to more than 3,000 high-needs elementary school libraries, helping more than 900,000 students to learn to read.

Meanwhile, Rivard Dexter and her Co-Founder and CEO Leah Skerry are working on tapping the Build in Canada funding, which will amount to $500,000 for one year. Build in Canada is a federal program under which the government is an early adopter of Canadian technology. However, education is a provincial responsibility. So Skerry and Rivard Dexter are searching for a partner – most likely a provincial education department – that can use the funding to adopt Squiggle Park in their schools, then become a long-term customer.

Meanwhile, Squiggle Park is also encouraging parents to plan to keep their children reading through the summer holiday, as they tend to slip backwards when they’re not in school. The company has therefore launched its Buy-One-Give -One program. For every Squiggle Park program that is purchased for $60, the company will give one to a child in need.