EDUCATION = ACCESS
Room to Read distributed more than 4 million books in 2021, our largest annual distribution to date. This brings our cumulative total to more than 36 million books distributed over the past 22 years. Despite ongoing disruptions to book distribution channels, our innovative literacy initiatives and our strong partnerships with local governments and book publishers enabled us to continue to bring more books to more children.
Read through highlights of just a few of the innovative initiatives that enabled us to distribute more books to more children in 2021:
DEVELOPING PROGRAMS AND MATERIALS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
In 2017, Room to Read began working in the Middle East. With support from our partner Dubai Cares, we built the capacity of local partners, authors and illustrators in Jordan to develop high-quality storybooks in Arabic, distributing more than 600,000 copies of 20 new books across Jordanian government primary schools, informal schools, refugee camps and community centers. In collaboration with Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee, we developed an additional 12 storybooks, which were distributed to children across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. In 2021, we launched an exploration into a project in Lebanon to provide technical assistance to local nonprofit organizations that are helping to improve children’s literacy skills in non-formal education settings. Our literacy team is now supporting the development of effective literacy programming and the distribution of Arabic storybooks to refugee camps and under-resourced public schools across the country. We look forward to adapting this approach in other Middle Eastern and North African countries in the years ahead.
16 | ROOM TO READ 2021 ANNUAL REPORT
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