Room to Read Blog

Happy International Mother Language Day!

Today marks the not-very-well-known holiday called International Mother Language Day, a holiday that was proclaimed by UNESCO in 1999 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.   

The holiday originated in Bangladesh, a country that started commemorating what they called Language Movement Day after the Bengali Language Movement protested in 1952 against the declaration that Urdu would be the only official language for both West and East Pakistan (Bengali-speaking East Pakistan is now current-day Bangladesh).  Bangladesh still celebrates this holiday quite seriously and in fact, today, Room to Read Bangladesh organized activities for 81 of the girls supported through our Girls' Education program in the Siragjanj district.  The girls took part in story writing competitions, grammar exercises, and sang patriotic songs about their love for the Bangla language and their nation.

Each year, International Mother Language Day has a theme and the 2010 theme of "Rapprochement of Cultures" is a great reminder to us all about how language is a powerful tool for preserving and developing ones culture and heritage.  It is a theme that Room to Read addresses frequently through its Local Language Publishing program (LLP).  For many of our original titles, we encourage each Room to Read country to teach cultural identity, understanding, tolerance and dialogue through some of the local language books that they develop and publish each year.

Some examples from past years include Kapil, the Ant from Nepal, which teaches children about conflict resolution and peace, an important lesson for those Nepali children who have lived amidst Nepal’s political conflict.  Or, Nosipho Comes to Stay has tackled the difficult and sensitive subject matters of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.  In Sri Lanka, a country that recently emerged from years of civil war, Baby Fish Goes to School was a title that was printed in both Tamil and Sinhala and taught children that you can make friends with those that are different from you and even help one another (like helping a fish that lives in water go to a school that is on land). 

Room to Read now has printed 433 original local language children's book titles in 22 languages which represents over 4.1 million book that have been distributed throughout our libraries.  What languages you ask?  Count them here (in alphabetical order):

1. Afrikaans (South Africa)
2. English (India, South Africa)
3. Garhwali (India)
   
4. Hindi (India)
5. IsiNdebele (South Africa)
6. IsiXhosa (South Africa)
7. IsiZulu (South Africa)
8. Khmer (Cambodia)
9. Lao (Laos)
10. Nepali (Nepal)
11. Rajasthani (India)
12. Sepedi (South Africa)
13. Sesotho (South Africa)
14. Setswana (South Africa)
15. Sinhala (Sri Lanka)
16. Siswati (South Africa)
17. Tamil (Sri Lanka)
18. Telugu (India)
19. Tharu (Nepal)
20. Tshivenda (South Africa)
21. Vietnamese (Vietnam)
22. Xitsonga (South Africa)

Yes…WOW!  And, in 2010, we'll launch our Local Language Publishing program in Bangladesh and begin publishing in Bangla!  Which bring us back around to today: International Mother Language Day.

Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, stated, "The mother language, in which the first words are uttered and individual thought expressed, is the foundation for the history and culture of each individual. Moreover, it has been proven that children learn best when they are instructed in their mother language during their first years at school."

That's why Room to Read's Local Language Publishing program was created; it's why we pushed ourselves to make sure our Reading Room libraries are stocked with grade-, language-, gender- and culturally- appropriate books and other learning materials for children who access our libraries. And it's why we now have already printed over 400 local language books with another 117 slated for printing this year.

So, when you sit down to read tonight, celebrate the language in which your book is written and cherish reading those words while wishing yourself a Happy International Mother Language Day!

 

To learn more about our programs in Bangladesh, click here.
To learn more about our Local Language Publishing program, click here.

Room to Read Unveils Vision for Our Future

For those of you on our email newsletter list, this message hit your inbox today.  But in keeping with our efforts to communicate our work to as many of our supporters as possible, we are cross-posting this message on our blog to make sure you are up-to-date on our exciting plans for Room to Read's second decade.

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Dear Friends:

It’s hard to believe that this year Room to Read celebrates its ten year anniversary!

Last year, knowing we were about to mark year ten, we embarked on a global strategic planning process to chart the roadmap for our second decade and to reflect on our strengths and key learning’s from the past ten years. It was a collaborative and comprehensive process that involved input from our country, regional and global offices, our advisory and board of directors, our donors, and experts in the field of international education.

We are excited to share with you the outcome of that process -– our vision for our second decade that focuses our mission and our work in two key areas: literacy and gender equality in education.  In the past ten years, we have built and scaled an organization that is working with thousands of communities across nine countries to provide enhanced learning opportunities for millions of children in Asia and Africa. Our future goal is more ambitious than ever: to enable more than 10 million children in over a dozen developing world countries to maximize their educational experiences by 2015.

We’ll accomplish this through evolving our programs to better focus them on developing literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and supporting girls to complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in school and beyond.  As we like to say, “this is an evolution, not a revolution” for our already successful programs; we will continue to implement our library, school, and local language books programs as well as support girls’ education but now these programs will have even more defined goals and outcomes.  We encourage you to read more about it in our plan Envisioning Our Future: A Roadmap for Learning.

Room to Read has always believed that “World Change Starts with Educated Children” and that every child has the right to a quality education in order to reach their full potential. We are confident our strategic vision outlines a clear roadmap to continue our progress towards this goal. We are in awe of all that we have achieved together and excited about the future direction for the organization. We hope you are as well and that you will continue on this journey with us.

Onward and Upward,

 

John Wood & Erin Ganju

Download Envisioning Our Future: A Roadmap for Learning here.

To sign up for our quarterly eNewsletter, click here. 

To read the complete Q1 2010 eNewsletter, click here.

Zambia: The "Teacher Librarian"

Chingale Mudenda has been teaching for the past two years at the Lukwipa Basic School in Zambia. What she loves best, she says, is that she gets to teach children how to read and write. “I spend a lot of my time with the children in the library to help them improve their reading skills,” she says. One could scarcely miss the enthusiasm and passion on her face as she goes on to explain how she skillfully helped set up the library at her school following the librarian training she received from Room to Read. So it’s no surprise that as a result of her efforts, she became known as the "Teacher Librarian."

Asked what the new library has meant to the school, Ms. Mudenda says, “It is a valuable gift to our children. In the past, the school had no books at all. But now, thanks to Room to Read, we have nice story books and our children are excited to spend their time in the library reading.”

As she walks through the library to check on what’s going on, she is impressed to find children busy reading. When asked what her role is, Ms. Mudenda proclaims that her duty is to help and encourage pupils to spend time in the library. She talks enthusiastically about how the book-borrowing system is working and how she encourages children to borrow books and read at home with their families.

Ms. Mudenda is so passionate about enhancing children’s reading skills that she even enlisted helpers to ensure that the library remained open during the day. She took it upon herself to train two pupils as library monitors and another as a teacher library assistant.

“When I’m busy teaching, the library assistant takes over and the monitors help out during the students’ free time,” she says proudly.

Thanks to Ms. Mudenda leadership and guidance, students at Lukwipa Basic now have a library (with helpers!) they can depend on to offer lots of story books that will help them to develop good reading habits and a love of learning.

To learn more about our programs in Zambia, click here.

And the Results Are In! More than 4 Million Children Reached!

This week Room to Read announced its latest cumulative results numbers from year one (2000) through year nine (2009) and we're excited to report it all out to you here.

As many of you who are familiar with us know, Room to Read is a results-focused organization and we take great pride to set ambitious goals just like any other global corporation would do, and we work hard to meet them.  Each year, our nine country offices work closely with our Regional and Global office teams to set their program goals for the year ahead and this year is no exception.  As 2010 begins, our Asia and Africa teams have already started working on their program targets –- whether that means establishing libraries, publishing new children’s titles, building schools, or accepting more girls into our Girls’ Education program.

At the same time, through our database system (and thanks to the Salesforce Foundation), Room to Read tracks each program project and monitors its progress.  It is this same tracking system that allows us to accurately report out to our investors at the end of the year what their donor dollar helped us accomplish.

Without further ado, we are proud to share that through the end of 2009 Room to Read has…

Established: 9,220 libraries
Constructed: 1,129 schools
Published: 433 local language book titles
Printed: 4.1 million local books
Donated: 3.3 million English language books
Supported: 8,707 girls’ educations
Benefitted: 4,066,775 children!!

We had an incredible first decade and we thank you all for being such a significant part of our success.

As we always say around here, onward and upward and…just you wait…there is definitely more to come!