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
Children’s right to learn is a shared responsibility. That’s why our community-based staff, who make up nearly 90 percent of Room to Read’s team, work hand in hand with local partners, communities and governments to design and deliver solutions that respond to the most urgent educational needs in each context. During our 25th anniversary year, we are celebrating these invaluable collaborations. The shared trust and deep expertise developed across our diverse stakeholders reinforce Room to Read’s role as a valuable partner of choice, ensuring that education and opportunity reach the children who need them most.Our partners in progress
For children who have known loss and displacement, our libraries have been a refuge where imagination heals and learning empowers. Through our partnership with Room to Read, we witnessed children who once carried the weight of war and hardship walk into a library and, for the first time, feel the freedom to simply be children, to wonder, to lose themselves in a story.
Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training
Room to Read’s life skills education prepares girls for their futures. Those who gain these skills view challenges not as problems but as opportunities, and they can address them with confidence.
Bandana Pandey
Deputy Mayor, Palungtar Municipality, Nepal
Every child deserves the opportunity to read, learn and dream beyond boundaries, and Room to Read is working effectively in the domain of foundational literacy as a valuable partner to the government in Madhya Pradesh to make that vision a reality.
Dr. Lokesh Khare
State Curriculum Coordinator, Government of Madhya Pradesh, India
Sri Lanka recently achieved a historic milestone when the Secretary of the Ministry of Education approved the country’s first-ever National Children’s Books Policy. Developed by the National Consortium on Children’s Books with technical expertise from Room to Read, this policy establishes clear standards for producing high-quality children’s books that can nurture a generation of engaged readers.
In Pakistan, we are proud to partner with the NGO Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) to implement our library and book publishing model through the Pakistan Literacy Project. Most recently, ITA and Room to Read have worked together to scale programming and benefit more children by:
- Establishing 34 welcoming libraries in Lahore and Bahawalpur districts and filling each library with 1,200 books as well as child-friendly furniture.
- Adapting children’s literature into Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto and Darri languages.
- Building the capacity of 140 district and provincial personnel to manage active libraries and promote literacy.
As part of our commitment to inclusive literacy programming, we have recently collaborated with the Vietnam Association for Education for All, the Happy Sun Center for the Visually Impaired and other organizations in Vietnam that offer expertise in sign language and Braille accessibility. We seek to soon establish Room to Read’s Vietnam office as the regional production hub for Braille books, enabling us to serve children with visual impairments across our Southeast Asia programs.
We began partnering with the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF) in 2020 to expand access to quality children’s literature with the adaptation of 40 Arabic storybooks for Jordanian public schools. Since then, we’ve collaborated on library materials and launched the READ! School Library Project, establishing 43 libraries. In 2024 alone, nearly 85,000 books were checked out from these libraries.
The project is now continuing under QRF’s leadership, with the opening of an additional 21 libraries. Book checkout rates are already outperforming the first cohort — an encouraging sign as QRF works to scale the model nationwide with the Jordanian Ministry of Education.
The LEGO Foundation knows that play is purposeful. Play-based learning has the power to bolster educational outcomes, particularly in young children. That’s why LEGO has recently supported:
- The translation and distribution of Room to Read’s Play Book Collection in Vietnam, Indonesia and India. The collection features culturally relevant narratives and incorporates themes that support holistic, child-centered learning, like social and emotional skill-building.
- Our life skills programming in India, benefiting 310 girls ages 12–13, with enhanced life skills curriculum that integrates interactive and play-based elements for adolescent girls as they build foundational learning skills for their futures.
- Professional learning for Room to Read staff and partner educators through LEGO’s “Learning through Play” workshops that explore ways to integrate play into reading lessons.
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
