14 April 2010
“Room to Read” Opening World of Books to South Asian Children
Children read colorful, attractive books in thousands of school libraries
Washington — Imagine you are a child living in a poor, isolated community that has been characterized by former Microsoft executive John Wood as “a world largely monochromatic and adult-sized.” One day, you and your friends enter a new library where the furnishings are child-sized, the walls glow with bright colors and posters, and the books are full of brilliant illustrations that tell new and traditional stories in your own language.
That experience now happens, on average, every four hours in countries throughout South and Southeast Asia through one of the world’s fastest-growing nonprofit organizations, Room to Read, founded in 2000 by Wood, who at the time was a marketing director for Microsoft in Asia.
In Nepal, at the end of April, Wood and Room to Read will celebrate the opening of their 10,000th children’s library. By the end of the year, Wood estimates that 5 million children will have access to their first library.
The program has built or opened more than 1,100 primary schools or additional school rooms and facilities as well.
“Many people do the right thing, but they don’t do it to scale,” said Wood at a recent meeting with the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
Wood said UNESCO estimates 760 million people remain illiterate, effectively shut out of the opportunities offered by a modern, information-driven society. “Two hundred million kids wake up each morning and don’t go to school,” he said.
The paradox was summed up for Wood by a school headmaster in Nepal: “We are too poor to afford education. But until we have education, we will always be poor.”
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Wood found his calling in 1998 when he took a vacation trek in Nepal and visited a school whose library had no books except for travel guides and other castoffs from tourists like him.
“Four hundred and fifty kids without books. How could this be happening in a world with such an abundance of material goods?” he asked in his 2006 book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. By 2000, his volunteer group, then called Books for Nepal, had opened more than 20 libraries and built several schools.
Early on, however, Wood and his team quickly recognized that donating English-language books was only a partial solution; the most urgent need was for children’s books in local languages.
He had another objective: not simply to teach literacy using standard, black-and-white texts, but to distribute colorfully illustrated books with compelling stories that would help instill a lifelong love of reading and learning.
With a name change, Room to Read’s growth over the next decade was explosive. Today, the program operates in nine countries — Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Zambia and South Africa — and plans to continue expanding as resources and local conditions permit.
The need for attractively illustrated books in different languages led Room to Read into local publishing ventures, along with commissioning local writers and artists to write and illustrate the books.
Room to Read now has published more than 430 original children’s titles and 4.1 million books in seven countries and in 21 different languages. (The program has distributed another 3 million donated books in English.)
Some volumes have English editions or English translations on the back cover. “When you learn to read in your mother tongue,” Wood said, “you have a much better chance of gaining literacy in a second language.”
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
The reasons for Room to Read’s rapid success are hardly mysterious. Some derive, quite naturally, from lessons Wood learned at Microsoft. As outlined in his book, they include an intense focus on results, openness (“you cannot attack a person, but you can attack an idea”), and being “data driven.” Wood can reel off a range of statistics at a moment’s notice.
But Wood can tell dozens of moving, personal stories as well. One is about a Vietnamese boy, Han, who was determined to read all 1,000 Vietnamese and English books in the new library. The night before its formal opening, he slipped in and read his first nine books by flashlight.
Wood and his team insist on regular monitoring and assessments to ensure that school and library programs remain sustainable and effective in meeting their core mission: providing access to books “in a child-friendly, print-rich environment.”
Chief Executive Officer Erin Ganju cites Room to Read’s call to action: “World change starts with educated children. We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world. We believe today’s educated children are tomorrow’s active, empowered and responsible citizens.”
The program has some impressive corporate sponsors, including Credit Suisse, Barclays, Scholastic Inc., and Goldman Sachs. But Wood and his staff have also built a worldwide network of 45 chapters, from Denver to Dubai, numbering more than 3,000 volunteers. In 2009, these chapters raised $6.5 million, or 24 percent of Room to Read’s annual budget.
Room to Read made a key strategic decision at the start: it would not simply donate money, but would insist that local communities invest their own time and resources to make the libraries and school rooms their own — often called the “challenge grant” model. Some may provide labor and materials to build a new room or renovate an old one, or agree to provide a full- or part-time librarian.
A recent Room to Read blog post described how workers and volunteers in the small Nepali village of Bardiya spent a grueling day in a cold, driving rain installing a special roof on their new school. Afterward, one villager turned to another and said, “It’s our school we build. It’s nothing but the best.”
FOCUS ON GIRLS
Like so many other international organizations, Room to Read knows the extraordinary benefits gained by a whole society from educating girls — from lower mortality rates to better health and higher incomes.
Room to Read’s Girls’ Education program takes a comprehensive approach by providing long-term scholarships that encompass practical items like textbooks, school fees, uniforms and transportation, along with tutoring services and medical care.
The program now supports more than 8,700 girls, ages 7 to 12, on long-term scholarships in eight countries (India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Zambia). Its retention rate is a remarkable 98 percent.
One of its most valuable elements is providing role models and mentors for young girls. Emily Leys, head of the Girls’ Education program, cites the example of Joshina, a Room to Read mentor in Nepal. “She herself was an indentured servant and provides a positive, breathing example to the hundreds of girls on our program who have lived through this same experience.”
Wood begins many of his talks with a provocative question: “What would the world look like if every person could read?”
If the world is ever to find the answer, programs like Room to Read are going to lead the way.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
Photo gallery: Helping Girls Stay in School