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We collect school textbooks and children’s literature throughout the UK, sort the books and send the relevant, up-to-date, and high quality books to schools in Tanzania. Any books collected which are not relevant to Tanzania’s curriculum or not appropriate for a Tanzanian school child are sold through our partnership with Better World Books to generate funds to ship the one’s that are and pay for books produced locally.
Why Tanzania? Tanzania follows a secondary school syllabus almost identical to the UK, but as one of the poorest nations in the world, teachers often lack the resources needed to teach. The UK government provides budget for new school textbooks year on year and newer editions of books inevitably replace the old (very often only a couple of years old though). This makes for good quality, but technically ‘out of date’ textbooks filling up school store rooms or ending up in landfill.
The solution seemed obvious to the founding students. They contacted local secondary schools and collected all disused books. In the first year (2004/5) they collected 40,000 books which were sorted to their strict criteria and in summer 2005 were shipped and distributed by those same students to school children and teachers in Tanzania. Whilst at the same time university students gave presentations to the UK school children.
Word quickly spread and the model was rapidly replicated across the UK. University students all across the country started groups and contacted surrounding UK schools to request disused books. As such, in late 2007 READ International was launched on the national stage in House of Commons. What began as a pipe dream operating from a student hall of residence, now has a full time staff team coordinating a national operation from a generously donated London office. To date we have shipped a total of 350,000 books to Tanzania. We have also sent several tonnes of sports kits, science equipment, and school stationery.
Our work in UK schools has also developed. We now deliver a project in partnership with Oxfam GB to raise awareness of global issues to UK school children, called ‘Think Global’. We have developed a workshop programme which is delivered in secondary schools by student volunteers to teach about the importance of global citizenship, student volunteering and young social entrepreneurship.
Next on the horizon is the establishment of a generously donated East Africa office, based in Dar es Salaam. This will allow READ to extend our work engaging Tanzania student volunteers. We will aim to replicate our successful UK student volunteering model across East Africa. In 2009 we will be donating over 300,000 books to Tanzania and supporting the renovation of dozens of school libraries so that access to these books is also improved. In 2010 we will begin donating books to Uganda as well as Tanzania and look to expand further still.
Since registering as a charity we have had our work recognised in a number of ways. Our founder and director Robert Wilson has; been winner of the prestigious Unltd level 1 and 2 awards, been a finalist in the Enterprising Young Brit Awards 2006, won the Social Enterprise Day Award 2006, been a finalist in the Edge Upstarts Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2008, and recently READ International was winner of 'Best New Charity' in the Charity Times Awards 2007.
It never costs READ more than 50 pence to move one book from a UK classroom into the hands of a Tanzanian school child or teacher. We are an innovative model with income streams from book sales and student fundraising drives but we’re not quite entirely self-sufficient, so we still need your help.
www.readinternational.org.uk
THANKYOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT FROM THE TEAM IN LIVERPOOL XXX
