Educating Every Child through Holistic Grassroots and Government Partnerships

Programme Partner: Room to Read

Region: India, Indonesia, Laos & Vietnam

World Change Starts with Educated Children.

COVID-19 was the biggest threat to inclusive and equitable quality education in modern times, leaving behind severe learning loss and a wider education gap in its aftermath. The World Bank is calling it “the worst crisis to education and learning in a century.” Over 2023 and beyond, Room to Read is keenly focused on addressing global gaps in education as we work together towards achieving UN SDG4: “Quality Education for All”.

Room to Read’s Literacy Program trains and coaches teachers, creates quality books and curricular materials and establishes libraries filled with diverse children’s books in local languages that can be enjoyed at school or home. Our Girls’ Education Program helps girls succeed in secondary school and negotiate key life decisions by supporting them as they increase their resilience, leadership, collaboration, critical thinking and decision-making skills.

We put the child in the center of programming and designing activities at every level of the education system – Room to Read supports partner schools and communities to become the model of best-in-class approaches to instructing and cultivating foundational learning skills that prepare students for success. We then integrate our best practices into national education systems in order to maximise positive outcomes for children at scale.

In 2020, we set ourselves an ambitious goal to educate 40 million children by 2025. Over the next two years we will:

• Strengthen diversity and inclusion in children’s books worldwide – narrowing the gap on lack of local language books that are representative of children’s cultures and experiences support their abilities to build life-long habits of reading and learning. We will add five more languages to our collection and publish more books across countries in Asia, focusing on children’s social and emotional wellbeing.
• Include Financial Literacy and Climate Justice into our Girls’ Education life skills curriculum in select countries across Asia and Africa by 2024.
• Integrate our Literacy and Girls’ Education model and curriculum into national systems in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Laos – enabling widespread adoption, facilitating systemic change to reach children well beyond Room to Read’s demonstration schools.

We invite you to join us as we accelerate an end to illiteracy and gender inequality worldwide.