The Golden Age of Books: Leapfrog to Literacy – Part 1 of 2

Leapfrog to Literacy – Part 1 of 2

Globally, 115 million school-age children do not attend school. An estimated 770 million people, roughly one-seventh of the world’s population, lack basic literacy. Two-thirds of these are women, which sets up a vicious cycle, since it is mainly women who teach young children.

These statistics could be reason enough for despair. Yet there are also new reasons for hope. Well-educated, highly motivated people are using the tools and capital of the developed world to help children in the developing world leapfrog to literacy. These people collaborate with equally talented and passionate people in the developing countries to create effective co-investment projects, linking the richest countries with the poorest.

One such person is former Microsoft marketing executive John Wood.

‘Come back with books’

Back in 1998, he took a vacation from his high-powered job to trek in Nepal. A product of an American upbringing, Wood was aghast at the lack of schools and scarcity of books in Nepal. Voicing his feelings to a local headmaster, Wood heard in reply a sentence that would change his life. “Perhaps, sir, you will someday come back with books.”

In his highly readable account, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children, Wood tells the story of his transformation from globe-trotting software executive to charity founder. His nonprofit organization, Room to Read, is one of the most effective organizations for educating children in the developing world. And it is growing at the speed of a Wall Street darling.

Putting an education to work

Like many fortunate Americans, Wood had the advantages of growing up in a family that valued education. Positive school experiences were reinforced with trips to his local public library in Athens, Pennsylvania. His bookish cradle left a lasting impression. “This love of reading, learning, and exploring new worlds so predominates my memory of youth that I simply could not imagine a childhood without books,” Wood writes in his book.

His formal education included an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School, but by his account, Wood may have learned even more about business during his years at Microsoft—including the habit of focusing on business models that can be scaled up. Wood learned firsthand how a team of people with focused concentration, and quantitative measures ever in front of them, could achieve impressive growth.

He also read history and learned how business growth principles have been applied in charitable work. There was Andrew Carnegie, whom Wood describes as “my own personal hero,” because of the many libraries he built a century ago.

Closer to present times, Wood was inspired by former President Jimmy Carter’s campaign against guinea worm disease, which resulted in a decline from 900,000 cases worldwide in 1989, to fewer than 30,000 in 1995.

Further reading and interviews gave Wood an understanding of the magnitude of global illiteracy, and also of the pitfalls of some conventional charitable organizations. It wasn’t uncommon for a large portion of donations to be absorbed in administrative overhead, nor for tangible results to be at worst illusory, and at best hard to quantify.

Drawing on all these experiences—childhood memories, higher education, work, field observation and self-education—Wood started putting together a new model for getting results in literacy programs. The principles include:

• Simple to understand: Room to Read donations build schools, libraries and computer labs in countries that need them most, including Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, India and, most recently, South Africa and Zambia.
• Co-investment model: Like Andrew Carnegie’s library model, funds are approved only when local communities contribute land, labor and the means for ongoing support.
• Inexpensive: Despite the current economy, U.S. dollars still go a long way in the developing world. For a few thousand dollars, individual donors can fund a whole library or school.
• Focus on quantifiable results: Room to Read has built more than 5,100 libraries since the organization began in 2000.
• Low overhead: Administrative overhead is limited to 10%.
• Accountability: You can read Room to Read annual reports and its Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) reports on the organization’s website: www.roomtoread.org.
• Clarity of goals—Room to Read defines not only what it does but what it does not do. (More on this in Part 2 of this posting.)

Building upon this solid business foundation, Room to Read makes effective use of Microsoft-era marketing techniques, including email networking and online donations.
Wood has rightly received much attention, as journalists and foundations recognize that Room to Read’s represents something good going on in the world.

In Part 2 of this post, we’ll look at how Room to Read applies some best business practices to doing good in a sustainable way. But first, I want to hear from you.

Do you agree that as a highly literate, developed nation, Americans should support global literacy? How about here in the U.S., and in your community—are there literacy programs you know of that are particularly effective?

Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Comments

[Luise]

I'm glad to learn about Room to Read and the good work it's doing.

One organization in Boston is the Boston Adult Literacy Fund (BALF), which has run literacy classes for adults and families since about 1989. In fact, a close friend of mine asked that a special birthday be recognized by gifts to BALF rather than personal gifts. (This ploy is used increasingly by celebrants of b'days, marriages, bar mitzvahs, etc. A no-brainer, seems to me.)

Looking forward to part 2 of Room to Read.

[Denise]

Yes, I think tackling world illiteracy is a better way to establishing world peace than the methods we have been using. I read an article in O about people building schools in Afghanistan. A woman was quoted in the article saying, "Educated children do not grow up to be terrorists." I agree, that giving children the power to become adults who read, so much more information and points of view are available to them. And self-sufficiency for some of these developing countries will lead them to change their status from third world to second world.

[Jane]

Our San Diego county library has a rather impressive literacy program available to adults who may need help learning English or adults who never learned to read well enough or sometimes never learned to read at all. I am tutoring my third student now--we meet twice a week for an hour and a half--his improvement is inspiring both to him and to me, a retired high school English teacher.

[Bix l. DiMeo]

I have a small foundation that I run. It honors my wife who was an avid reader and who lost her life to cancer. You can go to Susanstory.com and see what it is about. I need help with local groups who are working with literacy as their focus. Any help? I am in NJ. Thank you so much, I have been giving grants since we set this up and I am looking to do more

[Kelly]

My book club read John Wood's book a while ago and we were so taken with the cause that we recently had a wine tasting fundraiser to benefit Room to Read. It is a fantastic organization. Wood's book was inspiring; it illustrated the power that grass roots organizations can have. In the long run, there are many benefits to America supporting global literacy including national security.

[Jim Casion]

A truly inspiring story. When individuals, businesses, or systems reach a point of clarity and focus, you can create transformational ways of effecting our community, nation or the world at large. This appears to be such a case. However, I don't believe that his good work can be expected to solve all the nation's or world's woes. America has tremendous literacy issues. What community does not have a chapter of "Literacy Volunteers" ? Further the literacy issues of the Western hemisphere are legion. Haiti, a very close neighbor of the US is the poorest county in the Americas if not the entire world. What have we as Americans done?
We admire, praise and thank Mr. Wood for his tremendous accomplishments. Where are the other "Mr. Woods", who need to look beyond themselves, and make a commitment to reclaim some small part of their community, country, or the world? Thank you Mr. Wood for your inspiration. Now it's our turn.

[Sarah]

Read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. He and Mr. Woods ought to get along well.

[Linda]

I agree that global literacy is highly important, and I commend John Wood for his work. We must not lose sight of the great literacy problem that still exists in the US. Local public libraries across the nation have offered literacy services to their communities for years ... often without receiving kudos and recognition for their hard work: English as a Second language classes, GED test preparation, tutoring for students, and the crucial work done in every story hour offered by children's librarians ... that "playtime" disguises exercises in letter knowledge, vocabulary, narrative skills, phonological awareness, print awareness, reading motivation. Hooray for all the dedicated literacy workers!

[LYNN BUCHANAN]

This is a good addition to Sir Hillary's projects of building school houses in Nepal, another part of the world that needs educational help.

[Lee Klare]

The reading programs in America are good, the problem I run into is the parenting and kids. The parents don't have time for the kids because they are too busy living their own lives and the kids have no direction. The input they do get is from poor music, television and advertising, that tell them they don't "need no education". Yesterday in the news in California, the high school drop out rate was announced to be 24%, one in four students. That is apalling. How do we get parents and kids to wake up? I wish I knew. Of course if we aren't smart enough to figure this problem out, then I guess we will get reading programs from other countries when we finally do figure out that literacy is important to one's future, as well as a nations.

[Gene]

World literacy enables populations to both create and take advantage of economic opportunity. Economic opportunity is the foundation for political stability. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn to read, to learn and contribute.

[Karl Leopold Metzenberg]

Of course, I agree! May Wood have an even bigger effect globally than Winfrey had in the U.S.!

[Betsy Eubanks]

Reading is absolutely the key to civilization. Any effort spent promoting literacy, here and around the world, is worthwhile. Thanks for writing about this effort.

[Channing]

Hear hear. Yes, our support of global literacy is vitally important, and I will pass on the word about Room to Read. Their website is informative and touching. I await your Part 2.

[Jack Abrams]

Is it possible this program can be of vavue in American communities?
Jack Abrams

[Jo Anne Brooks]

I have not read John Wood, but I will. Just completed "3 Cups of Tea" and I am in total AWE of Greg Mortenson. The book -- for me --was riveting! I totally agree, education, education, education! and READREAD> ...JB

[James]

I see you have a shelfari account, you might like Bookarmy, the site that i'm on it has great forums and groups too!