WORLDREADER ORG
Readers build a better world
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Literacy is the fundamental building block of education; it is a core foundational skill needed for personal, academic, and economic success. But for millions of children around the world, access to quality literacy resources, especially books, presents a seemingly intractable problem. The development of proper reading skills makes a demonstrable difference in terms of a person’s lifelong prospects. Whether for economic opportunity, better health, or personal/professional goals, reading serves as one of the most important factors to ensure a person has a chance for a better life. With over 1 billion children currently out of school due to the COVID-19 crisis, digital reading solutions have become even more critical as students around the world continue to learn in a remote environment.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Youth Reading
Youth read digital books using our Worldreader Open Library and BookSmart phone apps on devices they already own. Lifelong Reading seeks to develop a habit of reading to increase the knowledge and competencies of readers, as well as promotes the impact, availability, and joy of digital reading to wide audiences. Our projects focus on gender, youth and adult literacy.
Primary Aged Children
Our school and at-home reading programs provide children with digital reading applications that have stories and textbooks tailored to the age, language, and cultural context of students. As part of the program, we also provide educators with the tools to foster cultures of learning in the classroom and beyond.
Pre Primary Aged Children
Through this program Worldreader seeks to empower caregivers and teachers to read books to young children using Worldreader content and technology. Age appropriate stories are provided to parents, caregivers and teachers to promote improved language/cognitive development, school readiness and positive parent/caregiver interaction. This program leverages content, behavior change campaigns, technology and training to reach children at the household, community and institutional levels.
Where we work
Awards
Innovations in Reading Award 2013
National Book Foundation
Innovation of Year 2017
National Technology Awards
Learning and Education Winner 2017
Pearson India
Charity of the Year 2017
London Bookfar
Social Enterprise Global Award Winner 2016
Schwab
Social Entrepreneurs of the Year 2016
World Economic Forum
Best Mobile Innovation for Education Award 2016
Glomo Awards
Microsoft Education Awards 2014
Tech Awards
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of readers on Worldreader apps or devices(cumulative readers since 2010)
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Worldreader collects data on the number of readers, books distributed, and other metrics on a daily basis to gain valuable insights into how best to serve our readers.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Worldreader has five 2020-2025 impact goals:
1. Children have improved school readiness.
2. School students improve their learning and educational outcomes.
3. Young people have greater work readiness and healthier lives.
4. Children and youth, particularly women, girls, learners in emergency settings, and learners with disabilities, face fewer barriers to equitable and inclusive learning.
5. Educators use data-powered insights for informed decision-making in improved reading programs globally.
In this five-year period, Worldreader expects to impact a cumulative 25 million readers around the world who lack the resources and support to achieve their potential. Worldreader’s theory of change begins with reaching these beneficiaries through five focus areas: 1) Pre-Primary School; 2) Early Grade Reading; 3) Adolescent and Youth Life Skills; 4) Equitable and Inclusive Access to Learning; and 5) Measurement Science. When these areas are tapped into through Worldreader’s proven set of approaches, people begin reading regularly.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Over the past ten years, Worldreader has worked persistently in utilizing technology to reach people in developing countries where books are scarce. Worldreader’s theory of change links broad access to books and targeted activities that promote reading, thereby fostering stronger reading cultures, and, ultimately, improved education, health, and prosperity outcomes. Specifically, Worldreader starts by providing access to high-quality, locally-relevant digital books via contextually-appropriate devices, then seeks to trigger wide-scale behavior change with the goal of normalizing digital reading in countries where reading has traditionally been reserved for an elite few. From production through consumption, Worldreader is driving the adoption of digital reading, sustained through local publishers, institutions, and individuals. Worldreader is moving strategically toward its five-year impact goals with a focus on scalability. Beginning with smaller-scale pilot projects allows Worldreader to fine-tune an intervention and ensure buy-in from implementation partners before growing to larger-scale or expanding geographically.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The increasing ubiquity and diminishing costs of digital technology enable us to solve these problems in a simple and straightforward way. Wherever possible, we build on digital platforms and mobile connectivity in the developing world to make our books available to children and families who need them the most.
We saw that cell phones were widely prevalent in developing countries so we created our Worldreader mobile library app that allows anyone, anywhere to access the Worldreader digital library from any connected mobile phone or tablet. Our publishing team works hard to optimize titles for the smallest screen sizes.
For pre-primary and primary-aged children, Worldreader offers the BookSmart app. Like the Worldreader app, it is easily accessible from mobile phones and tablets. The app features a library of children’s books in categories including learning concepts, health and wellbeing, nature and science, and more. Books are available in Arabic, English, Hindi, and Spanish. It is designed to be used in two ways: 1) by teachers in schools and by other community-based education programs as part of their established curriculum (with Worldreader providing technical and pedological training to support them) and 2) by children and their families at home. Worldreader's digital reading programs work best when they are embraced at the community level, and BookSmart is an exciting new way we are engaging with communities across the world.
We actively curate books by Global South-based authors for our library. The more relevant and engaging a student's first reads are, the more likely she is to continue learning and reading throughout her life. We also help these authors and publishers translate and digitize their titles and expand their audiences. We round out our library with wonderful titles donated by the world's top trade and textbook publishers.
Worldreader has staff in San Francisco; Barcelona; Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya; London, UK; Amman, Jordan; and Delhi, India. We manage logistics and support in partnership with local governments, school systems, and related businesses.
An important part of our work is monitoring and evaluation. We conduct research on literacy, mobile reading, and digital publishing. We examine our data for insights and adapt as needed.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In its first two years of programming (2010-2012), Worldreader impacted over 330,000 children, youth, and families. As of 2021, Worldreader’s impact has grown to 18 million with dozens of digital reading programs across the Global South. Worldreader now implements behavior change campaigns to ensure strong uptake of reading and has the capacity to measure impact and feed it back to education stakeholders for systems-level improvement. Since Worldreader’s home-based program Read to Kids launched in India and Jordan, over 200,000 families have benefited, and BookSmart recently launched on March 22nd with over 63,000 users. The positive outcomes of digital reading interventions are numerous, whether implemented at home or at school. The following are examples of positive outcomes that have been observed in Worldreader programs: (1) Significant improvements in mother tongue oral reading fluency and familiar word recognition; (2) Significant improvements in English reading skills; (3) Benefits to girls, including narrowing of educational and social gender gaps; (4) Higher teacher satisfaction rates and improved teacher retention; (5) Increased numbers of enrolled students and lower dropout rates; (6) Greater student participation in reading activities.
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
WORLDREADER ORG
Board of directorsas of 08/18/2023
Mr. Peter Spiro
Social Endeavors Foundation
Charles Brighton
Brighton-Jones
Colin McElwee
Worldreader.org
David Risher
Worldreader.org
Harrison Miller
Summit Partners
Kartik Raghavan
Two Sigma
Sue Sanderson
Sanderson Family Foundation
Terry Atkinson
Morgan Stanley
Peter Spiro
Microsoft Technical Fellow
Chris Capossela
Microsoft
Elizabeth Chandler
Goodreads
Elizabeth Dollar
Moss Adams LLP
Prasanna Krishnan
Snowflake
Kate James
Pearson
Michael C Jensen
Juno Therapeutics and Umoja Biopharma
Ericka Locke
Kaphan Foundation
Alison Rich
Penguin Random House
Dana Reid
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Gretchen Sorensen
Sorensen Group
Kedest Tesfagiorgis
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No