About Us - Frequent Questions - Programs & Countries

How do we form a partnership with your organization?

Partner organizations are an important strategic aspect of Room to Read's business model. Working in collaboration with local NGOs helps us build upon the strengths of existing work and also ensures long-term sustainability of our programs. At this time, our in-country teams are focused on strengthening relationships with current partners. Thank you for your interest but currently we are not accepting partnership applications.

Can you provide me with guidance on how you run your programs?

While we are flattered to receive requests to share our ideas with other parties, unfortunately we are unable to accommodate them at this time. We are in a period of fast growth and are focused on implementing, improving, and documenting our programs. Such focus allows us to continue to provide access to education for children in the developing world.

However, as an organization that is still young, we vividly remember our initial start up days and would like to provide efficient guidance to other young organizations. As a result, we have compiled a document outlining some of our best practices, covering both fundraising and operations, which you can download here (Adobe PDF, 166kB).

Can I sponsor a particular girl as part of your Girls' Scholarship program? Can I get letters from her?

It is Room to Read's philosophy not to establish a direct one-to-one relationship between our donors and individual students. We feel that forcing our students to maintain a relationship with a person they have never met is unfair, particularly due to the fact that a number of our students are quite young and not yet literate in English.

Of equal importance is that we want the children to feel that they are being helped by their own local community, in this case the local Room to Read teams. Having them communicate with a person overseas may have the effect of convincing them that the solution to their problems lies outside their own community, fostering a culture of dependence.

Instead, we ask donors to contribute to a general scholarship fund that is administered at a local level by our in-country staff. In order to allow our donors to learn more about the girls on scholarship, we publish an annual Girls' Scholarship Yearbook. This yearbook includes general information on the program, photos and letters from the girls, and program results.

For more information on the program or to download our latest yearbook, see our Girls' Education Program page.

How do you address the educational needs of children in developing countries?

We have four core programs that provide quality educational opportunities to communities throughout the developing world:

  • Reading Room Program - We establish libraries and fill them with local language books published by Room to Read, donated English books, games, furniture, etc. - everything needed to establish a child friendly learning environment.
  • Local Language Publishing Program - As part of our Reading Room Program, we source new content from local citizens and authors and publish high-quality children's books both in the local language and in English. These books are then distributed throughout our network of schools and libraries.
  • School Room Program - We partner with local communities to build schools so that children can have a safe learning environment.
  • Girls' Education Program - We fund long-term girls' scholarships so that young girls have the opportunity to receive the lifelong gift of education.

Does the work you are doing in these countries mean you support their governments?

We act as a non-governmental charitable organization. Because we work in public schools, we partner with governments to implement our educational projects, but we are not involved in the politics of these governments.

How do you choose the countries in which you work?

After creating and testing our approach to education in Nepal, we began to identify other countries in the world that faced similar educational challenges that our programs are well suited to address. Through our experience working in an additional six countries in Asia and two in Africa, our selection process has evolved to be a science and an art. Our initial stage in the process is to do a comparative macroeconomic analysis of all countries in a region to determine which subset is most appropriate for our programs at the current time. In this analysis we balance indicators of a country’s need for our programs (such as high rates of poverty, high inequality, and low literacy) with gauges of a basic threshold level of peace and stability that are necessary for us to effectively conduct our work. Additionally, we prioritize countries where the government has demonstrated a commitment to education so that we can help support and augment their positive efforts. We then supplement this high level analysis with on-the-ground research and conversations, networking with other organizations, and meetings with in-country officials to determine our final country selections. However, it is important to note that we recognize there are many countries and communities facing educational challenges, all deserving support. It is our hope that one day Room to Read will be able to reach all the children in the world waiting for their turn at a high quality education.

What other countries do you plan to expand into?

Room to read is always expanding its work within its countries of operation. As for working in additional countries, we are currently establishing Room to Read in Bangladesh. We are also researching opportunity and need in Africa with a goal to register and launch programs in one or two additional African countries by 2010. Beyond this, we continue to research Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East for possible future programming.

As always, we will keep our donors and interested parties abreast of expansion plans through our website, quarterly electronic newsletters, and mailings, as appropriate.

Can you start working in my country?

Unfortunately, expansion is not that simple.

As mentioned above, we have a detailed planning process that guides our expansion into new countries. In order to select a specific country, we have to look at a number of macro economic and education metrics, conduct on-the-ground interviews and research, and consult with other groups working in the area. All of this data is used to determine which potential countries are the best match for our programs.

For this reason, we do not take requests for expansion into new countries. However, we will keep you posted as we expand into new regions. Also, if you are interested in being included in our database of potential partnerships for when we begin researching possible expansion into your country, please fill out our Partnership Request Form (Microsoft Word, 76kB) and email it to info@roomtoread.org.

How do you select the villages that you partner with?

One of Room to Read's key tenets is community participation and involvement. Across all of our programs, communities are required to contribute to the success of the project in the form of land, labor, materials, and money. Communities partnering with us on the School Room Program often donate the land on which the school will be built, the materials and labor. For the Reading Room Program, the school community often dedicates a room or classroom space to be used solely for the project and donates labor and materials.

For each of the programs, villages are selected by our in-country teams. There are three main criteria:

  1. The village must pass our thorough needs assessment: Before committing to working with a village, our representatives must be satisfied that there is a genuine need for a new or refurbished school or library. It must further be demonstrated that the new program will have a significant positive impact on the school-aged children in that area and that there is a commitment from the community.
  2. The village must initiate the request: By working only with those villages that request our services, we ensure that villages share our belief in the value of education for their children and are committed to working with us.
  3. The village must sign our "Challenge Grant" contract: This agreement stipulates that the village will participate in the implementation of the proposed project and co-invest in the effort.

Can you work in a particular village that I know needs your help?

We appreciate your interest in helping a particular village. At this time our projects are fully selected so we cannot accommodate individual requests. If you are a donor and are interested in contributing to a particular country or region, please email donate@roomtoread.org.

How can my organization get the books you publish?

In addition to distributing our local language books to our network of schools and libraries, we occasionally donate books to other local NGOs in the countries in which we work. If you are a representative of such an NGO and would like to apply to receive some of our local language books, please contact info@roomtoread.org. Due to the volume of requests received, our staff (from our global office and/or a local office) may not be able to reply to requests if there is no potential for a book donation.

We do not currently sell or donate any of our local language books to organizations outside of the countries in which we work. If we decide to change this policy, information on how to obtain books will be provided on our website.

My organization would like to ship books to another country. How do I do it?

All of the books donated to Room to Read are shipped in partnership with large publishing houses or through our partnership with The Asia Foundation, both of whom handle the shipping and logistics. It is beyond the scope of our work to collect individual book donations and/or facilitate shipping them to various countries. As such, we unfortunately do not have expertise in freight forwarding to share with other parties.

Have you ever stopped a program or put one on hold for further expansion?

Room to Read is constantly striving to assess and improve upon our programmatic work with an eye on maximizing educational impact. Not only are we continually exploring and testing new programs and opportunities, but we are also open to making tough decisions, especially when further implementation of particular programs is no longer cost-effective or feasible.

In 2008, for example, Room to Read decided to suspend the Language Room program indefinitely. Reasons for this decision included: (1) high cost for establishing each project; (2) difficulty maintaining Language Room equipment; and (3) difficulty integrating Language Room tools and activities into school curricula. Room to Read has continued to support existing Language Room projects, but no new projects have been established since 2007. Based on demand for English language instruction in the countries in which we work, Room to Read is currently exploring other ways to address this need.

More recently (early 2009), Room to Read decided to suspend the Computer Room program. This decision came after a careful and thoughtful process of conducting research, collecting internal and external feedback, and examining the economic forecast for the next several years. Existing Computer Room projects will continue to receive support, and Room to Read will fulfill its project obligations to the communities in which Computer Room projects have been established. However, no new projects or initiatives involving technology will be launched in 2009 or 2010.

In both cases, Room to Read realizes that English language instruction and technology may ultimately play a key role in its efforts to bring educational opportunities to children in the developing world. At this time, however, Room to Read will focus its resources on improving the quality of its core programs with an eye towards revisiting English language instruction and the use of technology sometime in the future.