200 million children in sub-Saharan Africa never have a chance to own a book of their own.

UNESCO reports over 200 million schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa have inadequate access to books of any kind (SACMEQ II). Fifty percent of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have few or no books at all. As the World Bank reports, only 1 in 19 African countries has anything close to adequate book prevision in schools.

Worldreader is a non-profit social enterprise that is transforming education by changing the way the developing world reads, in order to provide “books for all”.

Our mission is to unlock the potential of millions of children, by providing them with easy access to digital books, in places where access to printed reading materials is extremely limited or prohibitively expensive.

Worldreader partners with governments, NGOs, organizations, schools, e-reader manufacturers, and book publishers in order provide children in the developing world with what in many cases is their only access to books. Our goal is to transform publishing and reading in the developing world. With the help of our partners and supporters, we have in a very short time delivered over 190,000 digital books to over 1,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa. We are on track to grow by 400% in 2012.

Our goal is to send 1 Million e-Books to Africa in 2012. With the generous support of our partners and donors, and a lot of hard work, we believe that we can bring this idea to fruition.

Problem

Books change everything. Reading inspires and it empowers. Literacy is also a critical driver of prosperity and well-being. Yet, in much of the developing world, children have access to an astonishingly small range of books. According to UNESCO, there are over 200 million schoolchildren who have inadequate access to books of any kind in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Fifty percent of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have few or no books at all. The World Bank notes that only 1 in 19 countries in Africa have adequate provision for schoolbooks. In Liberia, the schools are overflowing; but there are nearly no books to had. Nearly every day, Worldreader receives inquiries from people and organizations all over Africa who are interested in implementing our solution to this critical problem.

Solution

Worldreader partners with governments, NGOs, organizations, schools, e-reader manufacturers, and book publishers in order provide children in the developing world with what in many cases is their only access to books. Worldreader has created a new program for global e-book implementation, and is making this program available to educational institutions through Worldreader Kits. Each Worldreader Kit contains 50 e-readers, 5,000 e-books, protective cases, reading lights, field-tested implementation and training tools, educational expertise, and ongoing support. In their first launches, Worldreader Kits were successfully deployed in multiple communities in Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda. Worldreader is also turning on its head the notion that reading e-books requires an expensive e-reader, tablet, or smart phone. In partnership with biNu, a cutting-edge App developer, the Worldreader Book App is now deployed on over 2.8 million mobile "feature phones" in Africa and India, and over 300,000 people actually downloaded and read books in the first month of the App's availability. Worldreader is currently in active discussions with 19 external partners, who range in size from schools, to foundations, to corporations, to national governments. More schools; more books; more options: books for all in the developing world.

Example

In Ghana, the Worldreader iREAD project deploys e-readers and e-books to a number of primary, middle, and secondary schools. In cooperation with USAID and the Ministry of Education, we gauge the impact of our many projects by measuring the number of books read before and after deployment, students’ reading ability, as well as our own ability to provide delivery and support. Longer term, we look for increased community involvement in reading, and ultimately increased literacy rates beyond UN-predicted levels. What we learn helps Worldreader to distribute and integrate e-readers into the classroom more effectively. Worldreader is proud to share the results of the USAID-funded report from ILC Africa, an independent measurement and evaluation firm, which studied the impact of the Worldreader iREAD pilot program in Ghana. This study found: • A dramatic increase in children’s access to books: Students with e-readers carried with them an average of 107 books each. • Increased enthusiasm towards reading: Students actively downloaded over 6,000 free books during the course of the study, in addition to the local and international textbooks and story books provided by Worldreader. • Increased resources for teachers: The Kindles allowed teachers to conduct background research, create lesson notes, and design reading comprehension assessments for students. • Increased performance on standardized test scores: Reading scores of primary school students who received e-readers increased from +12.9% to +15.7% (depending on whether they received any additional reading support).

Marketplace

As far as we know, nobody else is providing e-books on this scale to solve this problem. We have peers in the innovation space: One Laptop per Child and Room to Read overlap our efforts to some degree. OLPC innovates via the delivery of technology, but Worldreader provides technology, training, community eduction, support, and content. RTR has done an outstanding job providing access to physical libraries in South Africa and Zambia, and is newly operating in Tanzania. Worldreader seeks to operate where access to physical books is the overriding issue.