AED was awarded a cooperative agreement to help strengthen the basic education sector in the Central Asian Republics including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.  Consortium partners for this effort include the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation, Save the Children in the United Kingdom and the United States, and Abt Associates.

The Participation, Education and Knowledge Strengthening (PEAKS) Project focused on five key areas designed to:  1) improve in-service teacher training; 2) refine curricula, with an emphasis on learning skills; 3) increase parent and community involvement in schools; 4) strengthen institutional, management, and technical capacities at the national, oblast (state), rayon (district), and school administration levels to better support innovation in schools; and 5) upgrade school infrastructure.

AED and its partners developed professional associations for educators, sponsored professional development schools that are resource centers for teaching excellence, and built community learning associations (CLAs) to deepen teacher and parent resources and opportunities in remote rural areas.  The consortium created community education committees to bolster educational quality and school management.  In addition to those activities, the project analyzed educational sector fund flows, stakeholders and systems.  Over the course of this work, AED assumed an active role in donor coordination and infrastructure improvements for damaged, unsafe, or obsolete schools with special attention to child-friendly and girl-friendly designs.