2024 Annual Report

2024 Annual Report

Room to Read Bangladesh students engaged in class.

25 years of Room to Read

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.

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.

 

READ THE FULL 2024 ANNUAL REPORT

 

“Twenty-five years ago, our mission was born from a radical, luminous idea; that education is not just a tool, but the most powerful force we have to reshape the world.   A quarter century later, I have seen that belief take root — in the laughter of children discovering words for the first time, in girls rewriting their destinies,  and in communities rising with dignity and purpose.   This isn’t charity. This is architecture. Together, we are designing space — literally and figuratively — where children are not defined by the walls they are born within, but by the doors they learn to open. Because of you, this story is still unfolding…one child, one book, one future at a time.”  – Dr. Geetha Murali, Chief Executive Officer

 

Our 2024 Impact

US$1B invested in global education by the end of 2025, 14.1MM children benefited in 2024, including 6.3MM children new to Room to Read, 52MM children benefited globally since our founding, 29 countries benefited since 2000

Room to Read Cambodian students reading a book

Literacy

icon of child47MM children benefited cumulatively, including 13.5MM in 2024

 

check mark icon Students read up to 2.5X faster and answer 2.6X more comprehension questions than peers in comparison schools

 

person holding book icon Trained 27,278 educators, 3,765 government officials and 255 authors and illustrators in 2024

 

book with Room to Read roof Distributed 44.5MM books and published 5,058 original and adapted children’s literature titles cumulatively

 

open book 153.4MM books checked out from Room to Read libraries cumulatively, including 10.8MM in 2024

Vietnamese students reading She Creates Change book

Gender Equality

 

4.1MM adolescents benefited cumulatively, including 625,942 in 2024

 

91% of adolescents advanced to the next grade in 2024

 

graduation cap icon 28,351 adolescents have graduated secondary school cumulatively, including 4,996 in 2024

 

Trained 688 educators and 306 government officials in 2024


Our learning agenda

Illustration from Room to Read children's book

At Room to Read, we are driven by an unwavering commitment to continuous learning, innovation and evolution as we seek to improve literacy, life skills, dignified learning and gender equality outcomes for more children, more quickly.

With 25 years of implementation experience across diverse contexts in 29 countries, we are uniquely positioned to understand what works in delivering and scaling quality outcomes for children. In the coming years, we are bringing heightened structure and intentionality to an organization-wide learning agenda to improve our own work and contribute more boldly to sector-wide learning.

This learning agenda is a roadmap that guides what questions we ask, what tests we conduct, our areas of innovation and how we curate our point of view in the areas of our core competencies. By grounding our work in evidence as direct implementers, and working with partners, we will keep our programming strong and continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in education.

What we’re asking:

  1. What are the most effective pathways to scale literacy, life skills and gender equality programming through governments and partners? 
  2. What are the most cost-effective approaches to teacher capacity building?
  3. What are some of the different pathways for effective content distribution?
  4. What are effective approaches for building book publishing ecosystems?
  5. How can we strengthen the evidence base around libraries, literacy instruction, life skills and gender equality, and encourage others to do the same?

Our learning in action:

Our Scaling-up Early Learning Initiatives (SERI) project, a 10-year USAID-funded literacy project in India, drives systemic improvements in early grade reading across six major Indian states. To date, the program has benefited 878,504 children in 4,344 schools through a combination of direct support and collaboration with local government.

We recently completed an external learning study of SERI to deepen our understanding of system-level change in education. The findings show that system transformation is not linear — it requires continuous adaptation and is shaped by the local context. Essential to this process is maintaining rigorous implementation, influencing systems through relevant policies, and fostering local ownership and knowledge-sharing. This learning has offered valuable insights into how we can most effectively achieve sustainable change at scale.

National Summit of Foundational Literacy at Scale: Learning from SERI presentation

We know that literacy skills and reading habits are mutually reinforcing. Together, strong reading skills and habits support children on the path to becoming lifelong learners, critical thinkers and collaborators. In our groundbreaking 2024 study on children’s habit of reading and literacy skills in Natore and Pabna, Bangladesh, we saw for the first time a statistical validation of this relationship, confirming the effectiveness of our approach to literacy education. We are now conducting additional research using book check-out data and our Habit of Reading Assessment Tool to further understand the relationship between our library approach and strong literacy outcomes.

Students in Bangladesh choosing books and checking out books from Room to Read library

In Kenya, Malawi and Pakistan, Room to Read is working with local partners to integrate She Creates Change films into lesson plans. Film viewings are paired with a wrap-around curriculum focused on the life skills used in each film to promote gender equality. We will soon analyze programmatic data and conduct participant evaluations to assess the usage and effectiveness of the content. The findings will provide useful learning around the efficacy of digital storytelling content to provide life skill lessons to adolescents at scale.

She Creates Change adaptation and expansion planning in Kenya and Pakistan

Supported by the Jacobs Foundation, Room to Read is partnering with Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa to improve teacher coaching systems in government schools across South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, and India. This collaboration merges our expertise in foundational literacy and data systems with TaRL’s deep knowledge of government-led coaching. Together, we are identifying and testing scalable, evidence-based educator coaching models that governments can implement at global scale to support teachers and improve student learning.

 

Room to Read 25 years, our story, your chapter

Celebrating our global community

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