Literacy non-profit growing faster than Starbucks

18 March 2010 [MediaGlobal]: In 1999, Microsoft executive John Wood quit his job at the age of 35, and established Room to Read, a non-profit with the vision of a world where all children have access to education, regardless of where they live or their social standing. Wood was inspired after a trip to Nepal, where he visited a local school whose library consisted of a few Danielle Steele and Lonely Planet books leftover by backpackers, which were still considered so precious, they were kept under lock and key. As he left, the schoolteacher said, “Perhaps Sir, you will someday come back with books.”

Ten years later, Wood has gone back with much more than books. While Room to Read started off with a simple book drive to that Nepalese village, it has since expanded into a global initiative to spread education to the world’s most marginalized populations. While Woods’ original goal to reach 10 million children by 2020 seemed unrealistic, he is almost halfway there. To date, Room to Read has affected 4.1 million children, opened 1129 schools and 9196 libraries, published 433 books by local authors in local languages, distributed 7.3 million books, and given 8725 scholarships to girls. Today, Room to Read is operating in nine countries and is looking to expand into east Africa, and has support and fundraising chapters in 45 cities worldwide. The organization opens a new library on average every four hours, making Room to Read a faster growing enterprise than Starbucks.

Room to Read’s success is due largely to how it is run, which is more like a business than a charity. Results are published on a quarterly basis, with exact number of schools built, books distributed, and facts on graduation (with higher education rates for girls scholarship recipients) so investors can see actual progress. For example, in 2008, 98 percent of the girls receiving scholarships moved on to the next grade, and over 60 percent of former scholarship recipients when onto college on their own accord. Also, rather than sending in foreigners to build schools, manage them, and find teachers, Room to Read partners with local governments to ensure they will staff the schools, then uses local workers, and local parent volunteers to build schools and libraries. In addition, Room to Read publishes children’s books written and illustrated by local authors (many children themselves) in the native language. As Woods’ said, “There is no Nepalese Dr. Seuss,” so Room to Read helps to create their own children’s classics.

Room to Read’s success makes it a model of how to run a nonprofit with tangible results and worldwide influence. Speaking at the World Affairs Council last week in San Francisco, Woods’ quoted a man who perfectly summed up the lack of education: “We are too poor to afford education, but until we get education, we will always be poor.” Room to Read has taken amazing steps to confront this problem while building up the literary capacity of developing countries, and granted its astonishing success in its first ten years, Woods’ goal of affecting 10 million children by 2020 seems well within reach.
Nicola Winter

To learn more, or to support Room to Read, visit www.roomtoread.org