Resist

READ International was founded by 3 UK university students in 2005.  They aimed to engage as many young people as possible in their mission to promote literacy, global citizenship and healthy learning environments in Africa.  To date, nearly 1,000 young students have worked volunteered for READ and in 2007 they won ‘Best New UK Charity’ in the Charity Times Awards.  There are currently over 500 student volunteers actively involved in their great work, based at 22 UK universities, and it’s still growing so fast!

How it works:  Many countries in Africa follow a secondary school syllabus very similar to that in the UK. But as some of the poorest nations in the world, teachers often lack the resources to teach. The UK/Western governments provide budget for new school textbooks/educational resources year on year so a small change in the UK syllabus means new editions of books can replace the old.  This makes for good quality, often nearly new, but technically ‘out of date’ textbooks/educational resources filling up school store rooms or ending up in landfill.

So in 2005, some friends at Nottingham University contacted the local secondary schools and collected their disused books. In the first year they collected 40,000 books which were sorted according to a strict criteria (only good quality, relevant, up-to-date books allowed) and in summer 2005 they shipped and personally distributed 25,000 books to Tanzania.

Word quickly spread, the model was professionalised and they rapidly replicated the concept across dozens of locations throughout the UK.  To date they have shipped a total of 336,000 books to Tanzania. 

Registered Charity Number 1114279
http://www.readinternational.org.uk
Contact: Rob Wilson (Founder and Director)
Phone: 02030319116
Email: info@readinternational.org.uk