The ripple effect 

Room to Read is a global nonprofit working to address educational, gender and economic inequities affecting children around the world. Since its launch in 2000, the NGO has deployed almost US$1bn to deliver foundational learning to more than 52 million children, including thousands across Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.

Its literacy pillar includes teacher training, publishes local language books, and develops school and community libraries, and through its Girls Education Programme, it delivers life skills education, mentorship and other community engagement.

Room to Read’s latest initiative, She Creates Change, is a global multimedia storytelling campaign designed to empower adolescent girls with educational content and life skills.

For CEO, Geetha Murali, the mission to empower girls is deeply personal. Both her grandmothers were child brides, but her mother, the eldest of seven, refused. “She redirected an entire lineage towards alternative futures, and I am a living example of the ripple effect,” Murali tells the Shaping Philanthropy podcast.

“If it's not enough to see educating girls as a moral imperative, it is also just smart economics,” she explained. “Every extra year of school increases a girl's future income.”

Room to Read has been working in the Middle East for several years and has recently scaled up its work in response to regional conflicts. In Gaza, the NGO partnered with ANERA to distribute locally-authored Palestinian children's books and educational materials to displaced families.

In Lebanon, Room to Read has supported 125 non-formal education centres, providing 69,000 children with both books and safe spaces for learning. And in Jordan, through a partnership with the Queen Rania Foundation, it has established 43 public school libraries and adapted 40 Arabic storybooks for national use.

Murali tells the story of 12-year-old Hafiz, who lost his mother and brother during the Syrian civil war and arrived in Lebanon as a shy and withdrawn refugee. After visiting a Room to Read-supported library in Baalbek, his life changed.

“He began to open up when he saw himself on the pages of books, and those books became both mirrors and windows into other worlds,” She explains. “Now, he's more expressive, is engaging with other children, and is enrolled in grade three. Ok, he’s still a bit behind, but he is motivated to achieve and he's catching up.”

At a time of great introspection about how nonprofits operate, Room to Read prides itself on being simultaneously local, regional and global.

“Our decentralised approach to leadership and functional expertise enables us to empower local stakeholders to set their own agendas, develop solutions and bring forward the capacity, leadership and resources that make those solutions a reality,” Murali says.

In November, Room to Read announced it was launching a US$75m fundraising initiative to expand its African programming (currently in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia) and deliver foundational literacy and life skills to eight million children on the continent.

Ninety percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa can't read a simple text by the age of 10 she explained, but by 2050, one-third of the world's youth will be on the continent. “So African, in our opinion, represents both our greatest challenge and opportunity in terms of learning today.”

Listen to the full interview to hear more from Murali about how reading transforms lives and why investing in girls’ education is the smartest move for global progress.