This year, we celebrate 25 years of transforming lives through education. Together with our global community of supporters and like-minded changemakers, who have played a pivotal role in the growth and success of our organization — one book has become more than 44.5 million, one country has become 29, one child benefited is now 52 million children globally. READ THE FULL 2024 ANNUAL REPORT 25 years of Room to Read
In this report, we not only celebrate our partners in progress, we also share the new strategic vision for our future. We have ambitious plans to dramatically scale our proven, effective, data-supported programming to communities where the need is most urgent. We will expand our partnerships with local governments, public school systems and other NGOs to reform education systems at the national level, integrating our proven interventions to deliver outcomes at scale. We will work alongside other formal and non-formal learning partners, as well as multimedia partners, to accelerate learning outcomes for all children. Room to Read will reach children where they are — in classrooms, in refugee camps, or at home — to ensure that education endures, no matter the circumstances.
We will not stop until every child has access to a quality education.
2024 Annual Report
Our 2024 Impact
47MM children benefited cumulatively, including 13.5MM in 2024
Students read up to 2.5X faster and answer 2.6X more comprehension questions than peers in comparison schools
Trained 27,278 educators, 3,765 government officials and 255 authors and illustrators in 2024
Distributed 44.5MM books and published 5,058 original and adapted children’s literature titles cumulatively
153.4MM books checked out from Room to Read libraries cumulatively, including 10.8MM in 2024
4.1MM adolescents benefited cumulatively, including 625,942 in 2024
91% of adolescents advanced to the next grade in 2024
28,351 adolescents have graduated secondary school cumulatively, including 4,996 in 2024
Trained 688 educators and 306 government officials in 2024
Africa faces a critical educational crisis. Today, 90 percent of students across sub-Saharan Africa cannot read a simple text by age 10, and estimates predict a shortage of 15 million school teachers by the year 2030. Additionally, no African countries have achieved gender parity, or equal access and outcomes, demonstrating the urgent need for programming that addresses literacy and gender equality gaps.The next chapter in Africa
Room to Read began our work in Africa in 2006 by implementing literacy programming in South Africa. Over time, we have expanded to work in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as recently in Kenya, Malawi and Nigeria. As we look to accelerate our impact across Africa, we are focused on closing learning gaps by expanding access to quality, evidence-based education. This includes deepening our commitment in the countries where we already work, while exploring opportunities to bring our programming to communities we have not yet served, ensuring more children gain the skills they need to succeed.
A snapshot of recent successes:
Together with local partners Girls’ Activist Youth Organization and PolycomGirls in Kenya, and the Creative Center for Community Mobilization in Malawi, we are adapting our Webby-Award-winning She Creates Change films and curriculum to support a new generation of changemakers.
We are strengthening the children’s book publishing ecosystem in Rwanda to ensure greater access to high-quality, culturally relevant books that spark curiosity and foster a lifelong love of reading.
In partnership with South Africa’s Department of Basic Education, we are implementing a comprehensive toolkit to promote child-friendly library best practices and cultivate a culture of reading in public schools nationwide.
Our Kiswahili language literacy curriculum for Grades 1 and 2 has been integrated into national textbooks and teacher guides. We are now collaborating with the Tanzania Institute of Education to distribute these materials to more than 18,000 schools.
As part of our ongoing collaboration with the Reading Association of Uganda, we revised national Grade 1 instruction books in Luganda and Runyankore-Rukiga languages in 2024, and developed inspiring, culturally relevant children’s books in Acholi and Lango languages in 2025.
This year, we celebrate 25 years of transforming lives through education, thanks to the generosity, compassion and optimism of supporters like you, who share our belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®. Our story would not be the same without your chapter. Explore our 25 Chapters for 25 Years Global Recognition List 
Celebrating our global community
