Room to Read India

The Need
While India has made very steady economic progress
over the last several decades, the benefits of this growth
CHINA have not reached tens of millions of Indian children, 87
Himachal Pradesh
percent of whom live in rural areas. The United Nations
PAKISTAN
Uttarakhand estimates that India has the highest number of illiterate
Delhi BHUTAN people in the world, with over 269 million people not
NEPAL able to read or write – 35 percent of the world’s illiterate
Rajasthan population. Further, approximately 52 percent of
students in India, the majority girls, drop out of school
before finishing secondary school.
Madhya Jharkhand
Pradesh
MYANMAR
Our Work
Chhattisgarh BANGLADESH
Room to Read India, launched in 2003, focuses on
establishing libraries and building the capacity of
INDIA teachers and volunteers to encourage the habit and joy
of reading. We also publish high-quality, illustrated
Andhra
Arabian Pradesh reading materials for young readers to respond to the
Sea dearth of appropriate children’s literature, especially in
Bay of rural India. Our Girls’ Education Program supports
Bengal
disadvantaged girls to complete secondary school with
the skills needed to negotiate life decisions. This includes
slum dwellers, migrant workers, child laborers, girls
without parents/guardians, Dalit and tribal girls, girls who
SRI are physically challenged, and girls living in very remote
LANKA
and rural communities.

Our team of Indian nationals works with both rural and

Room to Read is a global organization - working in nine countries
across Asia and Africa - that helps millions of children in developing
countries gain access to quality educational opportunities.
Since our inception in 2000, Room to Read has had an impact on
the lives of more than 4.1 million children around the world by:
• Building 1,129 schools and establishing 9,196 bilingual libraries;
• Publishing 433 original local language children’s books, in 21
different languages and distributing over 7 million books; and
• Currently supporting 8,725 girls through its holistic Girls’ Education
Program.
India has been a significant component of our success. Since
2003, we have impacted the lives of over 825,000 children of
India by:
• Establishing over 3,200 libraries (additional 850 planned for 2010);
• Printing 620,000 books in English, Hindi, Garhwali, Rajasthani
and Telugu for distribution in school (additional 171,000 planned
for 2010); and
• Awarding over 5,500 years worth of education to girls (additional
700 girls to join program 2010).
urban slum communities where illiteracy rates remain
high, gender disparities persist, and few educational
resources exist. Most of our interventions are
concentrated in government public schools and non-
profit alternative educational centers, but we also
support some local community centers. We are working
toward strengthening the government’s efforts to meet
its goal of universalizing quality elementary education
for all children. We work in partnership with the state
governments as well as local NGOs to implement and
monitor our work and promote long-term sustainability.
We currently work in the following regions: Andhra
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh,
Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.
In 2009, despite tough economic times, we remained
ambitious with our growth across program countries.
We established another 2,000 libraries globally – 955
of which were in India; published another 104 local
language titles – 18 in Hindi, Garhwali, Rajasthani,
Telugu, and English; and added approximately 2,400
girls to the Girls’ Education Program – over 20 percent
of which were added in India.
 Key Funders
Room to Read India - A Five Year Outlook
for India
Our Programs Will See Unprecedented Growth
• Libraries in India will grow from 3,200 to 6,000.

• Local language titles in India will grow from 74 to 300.

• Girls’ on scholarship in India will grow from 2,000 to 10,000.

• Room to Read India’s Annual Operating Budget will increase from

US$3MM to US$10MM in the next five years resulting in at least
US$35MM of investment in quality education programs.

• Room to Read is currently in eight states across India (Andhra

Pradesh and seven states in the Hindi Belt). There is potential for
incredible growth into new geographies as we line up significant
investors with targeted interest in other states.

• India leads our literacy efforts through the investment of the Goldman
Sachs Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our
other countries are building on learnings from India and customizing
the reading skills program to their particular environments. India will
scale literacy initiatives across many more libraries and schools in the

TUDOR
coming years and has the potential to do so at an incredible pace!

I Want to be a Teacher...
Payal is eleven years old and the eldest among
four girls in the family. Her father is a barber and
her mother works as a part time maid. As the
eldest daughter, she is expected to take care of
her younger sisters and also help her mother
with the household work.

Her finger nails are stained with turmeric, and the

Other Key Funders
scars of burn injuries and knife cuts on her hands
bear testimony to a difficult childhood. But she
is able to brush all that aside and talk about her
love for books as if there is no other care in the
world.

“I love to read and because my parents are away for most of the day, I can read without
being disturbed. If they were at home this would not have been possible because my
mother would think of a hundred things to be done in the same minute!” says Payal with
a big smile.
When asked how she manages to take care of her sisters and read at the same time,
Payal is a little sheepish, but she laughs and says: “Oh that’s easy. I read stories to
them, so they stay quiet and the youngest two often go to sleep. After that, I continue
to read, but I have one eye on the clock. Just half-an-hour before mother returns, we
quickly get the house in order and run to collect water from the tap across the road,
before making dinner for our father.”
By her own admission, her happiest moments are when she is in school. “It is bliss. I
can run, jump or read without feeling guilty or scared. I love school so much that I want
to spend my entire life here. That’s why I want to be teacher.”

Global Office: 111 Sutter Street, 16th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104, United States
Telephone: +1 (415) 561-3331 Fax: +1 (415) 561-0580 www.roomtoread.org/india