As we enter a new year, our Country Directors — the amazing leaders overseeing our programs and operations across Asia and Africa — recently shared what they’re looking forward to achieving in 2021. Take a look here:

Sourav Banerjee
Country Director, India
“We hope to reach all our beneficiaries in person in their schools, both the primary school children and the secondary school girls, and help them catch up with learning losses due to prolonged school closures.”

Rakhi Sarkar
Country Director, Bangladesh
 “In Bangladesh, we want our education models to shape national policies, our learning resources to become the first point of reference, and to scale up capacity development for teachers and government officials.”

Juvenalius Kuruletera
Country Director, Tanzania
 “We look forward to collaborating with the government in developing various reading and writing guidelines in the national storybook guide and delivering the national curriculum.”

Nuong Nguyen
Country Director, Vietnam
 “We look forward to further digitalizing our activities in both our Literacy and Girls’ Education Programs and to improving the quality and scale of our publishing with the Ministry of Education and Training. We’re also excited to continue new initiatives in book publishing, capacity building for local NGOs, and expanding our presence to new provinces in the coming years.”

Norkham Souphanouvong
Country Director, Laos
 “We will be extending our Girls’ Education Program into two more provinces next year.”

Vanessa Francis
Country Director, South Africa
 “We are excited to implement our cost-sharing model in 60 literacy schools across two provinces.” 

Shevanthi Jayasuriya
Country Director, Sri Lanka
 “We are looking forward to starting primary school teacher training in schools with the government’s reading room initiative. These trainings will help us reach out to children beyond the Room to Read schools.”

Pushkar Shrestha
Country Director, Nepal
 “We look forward to the implementation of our workbook, continuation of our radio programs, and also evaluation of learning for the children in our programs. We also look forward to strategic partnership with the government at all levels in Nepal, for scale in the years to come.”

Vantha Chea
Country Director, Cambodia
 “In the coming year, we will lead the collaboration with the government to develop and pilot the national library package for scale.”