Can I donate used or new books?

While we understand the desire to donate used books, we cannot accept any new or used book donations (unless it is a bulk donation from a publishing partner). It actually costs Room to Read more time and money to sort and ship donated books, than it would to ship new books in bulk from our publishing partners or create brand new books in Nepal (and the other countries in which we work).

Instead of donating used books, we ask that you consider fundraising and donating the proceeds to Room to Read to establish libraries or create new books. Alternatively, you can, do a New Book Drive to collect new children's books that will be used in our libraries. Please visit our International Literacy Day page for more information on New Book Drives.

If you are interested in doing something with your used books, we have a very successful relationship with Better World Books which may be of interest to you. They sell used books on our behalf and donate the proceeds to Room to Read to help fund all of our programs. They are also much better equipped to handle the logistics and make it incredibly easy for donors to send the books to them, by paying for shipping!

Please visit our page on their website: www.betterworldbooks.com/Partners/RoomToRead.aspx.

Do kids in Nepal have pets?

Nepali people view domesticated animals differently than we do here. Most animals that they own help with the work. The Nepali like dogs because they are good guards of the house; water buffalo are used for farming; and cats roam about hunting mice, but are not considered indoor pets like they are here in the U.S.

While they may not be considered pets, some elephants have been domesticated; they are used for ecotourism, disaster rescue, military purposes, or for certain ceremonies.

Can we start a sister school relationship?

We often receive this question from schools interested in Students Helping Students. Unfortunately, we cannot provide sister school relationships for a couple of reasons:

1. Room to Read strongly values community empowerment, so we do not want the communities and villages where we work to feel beholden to western donors for their new school. In fact, we emphasize this commitment by having only our local Room to Read teams work with the communities (see "Can I Volunteer?").
2. Given the scarce resources of many of the schools we work with, they simply could not participate without our help, and we currently don't have the capacity to oversee an ongoing correspondence between schools and donors. Our in-country staff is busy ensuring that all the projects we have budgeted are completed on time and provide the educational resources to the maximum number of kids. We want our program teams to concentrate their time building schools rather that collecting and translating communications to and from the States. (Remember, most of our Nepali students are learning to read and write; they haven't started to study a foreign language like English!) For a sister school program to work, we would have to dedicate people in the country to administer the program, collect materials from remote schools, translate every document and ship them to the United States, where another staff member would have to sort and forward them on to their sister schools.

We are continuously trying to find more ways of connecting Students Helping Students with the communities and children they are helping thousands of miles away. If you have ideas or suggestions on how we can efficiently and effectively connect together, please feel free to email us.

What about sponsoring other projects or programs in other countries?

By focusing on a specific country, we could compile and create lots of interesting material to help you learn about a beautiful land and its people. Nepal's rich culture has inspired us to provide a wealth of cultural awareness materials for students of all ages. Due to the small size of our organization and our desire to ensure that 90% of your donations go to programs for the children, we cannot offer materials about all the countries in which we work.

Our library and local language book programs are central to our ability to reach as many Nepali students as possible. Although building schools receives much attention, recent studies have shown that Nepal needs more secondary educational materials, like libraries and books. By establishing libraries, we can reach thousands of Nepali children who would otherwise not have the opportunity for an education. To understand more about why we have picked these programs, please click here.

Although we encourage you to focus on these selected programs, we would like to be flexible to your needs as well. Feel free to email us at shs@roomtoread.org with your specific questions or needs regarding our programs.

How does Room to Read measure the success of its projects?

Room to Read conducts an annual Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) process that examines our programs in the countries in which we work, allowing us to come up with ways to improve them.

In 2005, we improved on previous years by creating a more comprehensive examination. Our M&E process now spans projects in both rural and urban communities, and is being carried out in the four countries where we operated at the end of 2004 (with Sri Lanka and Laos to be added this year). The process examines all five of our programs.

The monitoring phase of the process is conducted through site visits by our local Room to Read staff. These members provide regular feedback to highlight areas for future improvement in our programs. In addition, the monitoring is performed on an annual basis to track the implementation of selected projects. The result is continuous improvement to each program in each country.

The evaluation phase of the process is conducted by an independent consulting team and consists of interviews with students and teachers involved in Room to Read's programs. This survey has been specifically designed for Room to Read, taking into account the complexity of our work in multiple languages across five core programs. The evaluation phase aims to measure the attitudes and perceptions of program participants and to gauge what these end-users think of our programs. We expect a formal, unbiased report to be generated by this team in the first half of 2006.

Through the M&E process, we seek to gather data on the impact of our programs and to enhance the quality of our work. We're happy to report that past results are quite promising. A great example in the Girls' Scholarship Program is the 98.3% of our 2004 Room to Grow Scholars who passed onto the next grade in school, and 40% of the girls were in the top 25% of their class.

Our Monitoring & Evaluation process has also led us to make qualitative changes to our programs. After a disappointingly large percentage of our Reading Rooms in Nepal were rated as 'poor' in 2003, we explored why they were not perceived to be effective. We came to understand that the children's literature available in the local Nepali language was of poor quality and the teachers in these libraries were not engaging the students to use the available books. As a result of this study, we launched the Nepali Language Publishing Program and increased our library teacher training. Now we are one of the top 2 children's book publishers in Nepal and Cambodia, and have started the program in Vietnam, India and Laos.

Why did you start your work in Nepal?

In 1998, our founder, John Wood, went on a three-week hike around the Annapurna Circuit. He met a teacher who invited him to visit the local school. John was amazed at how warm and welcoming the students and teachers were, yet also saddened by the lack of resources. This school had over 200 children, yet the "library" had only 30 books. Those books were locked in a cabinet, because books were considered a "scarce resource." The teachers asked him to help change the situation. The headmaster said: "All the children want to learn English, so that they can interact with trekkers, and maybe study overseas some day. Yet we are poor, we have no money, we can not even afford pencils, let alone books. Maybe you can help us." John vowed to help, and the program has grown from there.

What kind of sports do children in Nepal play?

Nepali children participate in all kinds of sports, from soccer/football to skipping. To learn more about the indoor and outdoor activities they play, click here!

Can I volunteer with Room to Read overseas?

Rather than send volunteers to Nepal or the other countries in which we work to help with our projects, we encourage the local villages to get involved and co-own the projects. We have found this model promotes longer term sustainability of the projects. In fact, our programs are initiated and managed by locals.

We do, however, encourage our supporters to visit the work to see how life-changing the improvement of educational infrastructure can be for these children, their parents, and many villagers! We arrange quarterly site visits in each country. Our visits are usually a couple of hours in length and include time at either a school, language lab, computer lab, or a visit with some scholarship girls (or combination of these programs).

If you are traveling to the area and are interested in potentially participating in one of our site visits, please email travel@roomtoread.org for a schedule of these site visit dates.

Do you really use yaks to transport books in Nepal?

Yes. We have used yaks, including our mascot, Zak the Yak (pictured below) to carry books to villages in Nepal. We have also used donkeys, motorbikes, trucks, etc. Basically, we will use whatever it takes to get the books into the hands of students!

What do kids in Nepal like to read?

Nepali children love to read books about animals, kids from other cultures, and places they have never been. They often like to learn about geography and history. Our local language program allows us to publish new children's books in Nepali so that we can continue to offer more options to kids in Nepal.

How do we know that our funds are going to the intended projects?

Room to Read values transparency in all aspect of our operations. As a result, we provide many reports on the projects that our donors sponsor. For every 5 libraries that are sponsored, we create a Library Completion Report that provides a description of one of the communities that is being assisted, the number of students who use that library, how the community partnered with us, and five or so pictures of the library. We also thank the donor by including their name on a plaque that is placed on the library wall. The donor gets to choose the wording. For schools we build, donors receive an Application Report, a Progress Report, and a Final Report, as well as a plaque. Sponsors of our local language publishing will receive copies of the book that they sponsored, which includes a dedication to them on the inside of the book.

How do you select the villages where new schools are built?

Room to Read's school building program has been successful largely because it requires community participation and involvement. The community is required to invest both funds and labor toward the construction of their school. Villages are selected by our in-country teams on the basis of three criteria:

1. 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.
2. The village must pass our thorough needs assessment: Before committing to a village, our representatives must be satisfied that there is a genuine need for a new or refurbished school in that community - both in terms of existing capital infrastructure and a significant population of school-aged children.
3. The village must sign our "Challenge Grant" contract: This contract stipulates that the village must (a) manage the construction process; (b) use an agreed upon blueprint (ensuring schools are built safely and cost effectively); and (c) invest funds, materials, land and/or labor to the effort.

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

We act as a non-governmental charitable organization. We partner with governments to some extent to implement our educational projects, but this is not central to our strategy. Our programs are mainly focused on supporting communities that request and desire our help. We partner with them in order to "help them help themselves".

How efficiently do you spend the money your investors give to you?

We pride ourselves on keeping our overhead as low as possible. Since our inception in 2000, we have kept our overhead expenses to less than 10% of total donations. This means that 9 of every 10 dollars invested in us goes straight to education programs, not to a wasteful bureaucracy. And since many villages are matching our investments to build schools, your investment is often effectively doubled.

Why should I support this organization when there are people in need in my own country?

We certainly think that every individual should support their own country. But in addition, we feel that it's important to help others. In particular, many of our donors come from some of the richest countries in the world, and their money can go a lot further in the countries in which we work. This world is really a small place, and providing a helping hand to those in need has no national borders.

For other FAQ's related to Room to Read, please visit www.roomtoread.org/about/questions.html.