Room to Read — a globally-acclaimed San Francisco-based not-for-profit organisation operating in nine Asian and African countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, South Africa and Zambia), where it has established children’s libraries — recently crossed two milestones. On April 22 it celebrated its 10th anniversary, and is on the threshold of crossing the magic figure of 10,000 libraries worldwide. In April its founder and chief executive John Wood, who quit his high-paid job as business development director of Microsoft in China and the Asia-Pacific region in 1998 to promote Room to Read, was in India to participate in special events organised in Mumbai and Delhi.
“There are still 770 million illiterate people worldwide, of whom over one-third are in India. If we could provide the gift of literacy and education to even 20 million of them, it will be a great legacy to leave behind,” said Wood, addressing a press conference in the national capital.
A finance and business management alumnus of the University of Colorado and Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern Univer-sity, the narrative of Wood’s conversion of the Room to Read initiative into a worldwide movement has become part of 21st century folklore. While on a trekking holiday in Nepal in 1998, he stumbled upon primary schools bereft of any books or learning materials. The following year, he returned with sack loads of books to be freely distributed in several schools in the mountain kingdom. Thus began the Room to Read global initiative.
Since then this novel enterprise has impacted over 4 million children worldwide through its literacy dissemi-nation programmes — setting up libraries, building schools, publishing local language books and supporting the education of girl children. “Our model is very different from Andrew Carnegie’s libraries. We work on a model driven by strong local entrepreneurial teams with commitment to their communities, instead of just doling out money. We have fund-raising chapters around the world and over 5,000 volunteers in 43 wealthiest cities who have raised about $700 million (Rs.3,220 crore). In India we plan to have three chapters in Mumbai, Delhi and one more city, and will expand our operations to more states,” says Wood.
Room to Read’s Asia programme is shouldered by its Delhi-based regional director Sunisha Ahuja, an alumna of Delhi University who has been connected with the India programme since its inception in 2003. “We are working with government schools in nine states of Andhra Pradesh, Chatti-sgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. Now we are gearing to increase India’s programme budget to $10 million from the present $3 million (Rs.13.8 crore),” says Ahuja.
A decade after he launched the Room to Read programme in Nepal following which he wrote his best-selling memoir Leaving Microsoft to Change the World and appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s chat show (which helped him to raise $1 million for the cause), Wood is more than ever convinced that he made the right career decision.
“Education performs wonders for individuals and society as the history of the developed nations has proven. Our mission is to expand the global network of Room to Read so that the world’s educationally deprived have the stimulus and opportunities to improve their lives,” says Wood.
Way to go, brother!
Autar Nehru (Delhi)