A new partnership to extend the joy of reading throughout the world
The joy of opening a book, immersing yourself in a story, connecting with characters, and remembering how it made you feel long after you’ve turned the last page. It’s an experience millions of children around the world miss out on.
Across the world, an estimated 250 million children are not receiving a quality basic education. Some 90 million are not even attending primary school. Often class sizes are too large, teachers are poorly trained, and there is a lack of suitable educational content available in local languages.
But without access to culturally relevant, age appropriate books in a language that they understand, these children can face a lifetime of illiteracy and its consequences, including lack of opportunity to higher education or employment.
This month Save the Children Australia merged with ‘Library For All’; a Brisbane-based organisation that is already delivering a free digital library of books to classrooms in Papua New Guinea, Laos and Timor-Leste. The digital library is a curated collection of age appropriate and culturally relevant books and is available to all Android devices through the Google Play store.
In classrooms or communities around the world where digital devices aren’t common, Library for All ships the Spark Digital Library kit - 40 tablet computers pre-loaded with the digital library application.
They also print and deliver physical books to create libraries for classrooms, communities and homes wherever books are needed.
With a global contributor community spanning 16 countries, Library For All has already reached 250,000 children with books in the classroom and at home, seeding a love of books in children we hope will never end.
Over the next year, Save the Children plan to work closely with the Library For All team to build on their programs in Papua New Guinea, Laos and Timor-Leste and start investment in new programs in West Papua, the South Pacific islands, and an Indigenous program in Australia.
Thanks to generous supporters, we hope this new merger is just the beginning of a great story that will enrich millions of children’s lives across the world.