By Jennifer Baljko

As a lean, nonprofit social enterprise, much of what we do is powered by the enthusiasm of our volunteers.

Now and again, Worldreader shines a light on their initiative, shares their on-the-ground experience with our broader community, and gives them a big public hug. You may remember, Sara Rhyne, for instance. She won our video contest last year, and was instrumental in helping with our Kenya launch in partnership with The Kilgoris Project.

This time, we want to say thanks to another star volunteer, Carl Hinrichsen (twitter: @carlhinrichsen). Carl comes to us via ESADE Business School and brings with him know-how from the mobile sector, as well as from working at Amazon’s European Kindle Team.  He volunteered to help us sort out some e-reader connectivity issues we’ve been having in the field, and without hesitation, he put himself on a plane to Ghana to see what’s going on first-hand. Besides getting down to technical details about why some e-readers sometimes behave differently, he’s fundraising to cover his expenses and sending up daily news via his blog and twitter stream.

Here are a few things that have us in awe with Carl back in our Barcelona office and excerpts from his blog:

1. His knack for trouble-shooting and encouraging kids to use built-in features on their Kindles:

“I suggested they tried out the ‘text to speech feature’ one day, a function of the Kindle Keyboard, which reads out a book’s content with a computer voice. Stephen’s [A Worldreader student] opinion: ‘The e-readers are great to read by yourself, but sharing and using them together with someone makes you enjoy them even more.’”

2. The connection he’s building with Worldreader’s students and families:

“We went on to visit Mabel and her family, a smaller but equally welcoming family, consisting of Mabel, her parents, her sister Millicent and her baby brother Abdel-Asis. Mabel’s father is a cab driver, while the mother stays at home to take care of the family. Both Mabel and Millicent have an e-reader, and they are often seen reading together outside of their house. Their mother had become a great supporter of Worldreader’s work and reported how both children had improved at school and in speaking English. They did indeed speak good English, particularly Millicent spoke great English for a primary school student, benefiting from the being in the e-reader class, and reading at home with her elder sister. Together with Diana [another Worldreader student], we read another of their favorite books on the e-reader: Ananse and the Pot of Wisdom.”

3. His keen observation and the questions he asks:

“Towards the end of our chat I asked if he had any suggestions for improvements. ‘Reading Lights,’ he suggested, ‘So students can read at night. And e-readers for all the other classes as well, so people don’t constantly come and want to borrow ours.’”

Carl, thanks for rolling up your sleeves and diving in.

Soon, we’ll be announcing other ways folks like you can get involved with Worldreader. In the meantime, follow Carl’s adventures in Ghana, give him hat-tip on Twitter, or help him help us bring “Books for all.”

 

 

By David Risher

One question friends often ask us is: what happens if the students lose their e-reader, or they get stolen?  Of course, it’s a real issue, and we have several strategies we use to deal with this.  (We won’t talk about all of them here.) But so far, we haven’t found it to be a problem.  These students know how to take care of valuable property: many have access to a cell phone, for instance, and take very good care of it.

Of course, stuff does happen to electronic devices, which is why we also distribute cases to protect against damage, donated by our very generous partners M-Edge. When we do so, it’s a big moment: the students get to personalize their e-readers and truly make them their own.

We also ask each student to take a pledge to take responsibility for his or her e-reader.  Here is a bit of video that gives you a sense of how that works.  The classroom teacher leads the pledge… in this case, she improvised a bit at the end, which is why you’ll hear religious language, but frankly it does feel a bit like a religious experience!

Finally, we ask the entire community to pledge to support this project.  We’ll write more about that soon.

Worldreader also works with e-reader manufacturers to be able to disable e-readers remotely, to reduce their perceived value.  And to be clear, Joseph and five volunteers spent an entire night keeping vigil over the initial shipment of e-readers– it’s naive to think that a large quantity of merchandise won’t attract attention.  But our early experience, both in our early trial in Ayenyah, Ghana, as well as this iREAD Pilot, has been that once these are in the community, theft hasn’t been a big issue.  In fact, here is the FAQ on this issue, which we wrote a few months ago, and still believe.

One of our students has said it like this: “Thieves don’t steal education.”  We’re finding that so far, he’s right.

A guest blog post by Patrick Mish, M-Edge President and CEO

Our purpose at M-Edge Accessories is to make electronic reading an engaging, enjoyable, and sought-after experience. We’re passionate about reading, and we’re passionate about bringing a great reading experience to our customers and our community. To that end, when I first read about Worldreader.org by way of a Google alert, their mission resonated deeply with me and the core values that guide our company. I knew immediately that M-Edge must get involved.

Being in the business of making e-reading great means that we’re inherently a reading organization; I currently have 9 books that I’m in the progress of reading on either a Kindle, Nook, or iPad, and our employees are feverish readers, too (I give out a lot of reading assignments!). With an organization focused on innovation and a customer obsession, our employees do quite a bit of reading on leadership, communications, and customer experience. Having access to this reading material certainly helps keep our company in a market leading position. Accordingly, with many young and highly motivated employees, I see firsthand how critical education and literacy are in driving our growth.

When we spoke with members of Worldreader.org, we were told about the many obstacles Ghana students face in regards to obtaining relevant educational materials. Generally, these students only receive books that have been donated by the USA and the material typically isn’t relevant to their lives in Africa. We were given examples of how Ghana’s teachers have been forced to teach classes on US geography; simply because those are the resources they have to work with.

E-reading devices like Kindle are enabling access to a multitude of relevant educational resources with a couple of button clicks. Students are downloading books that will educate them on African history or geography instead of reading materials related to the state of Utah. This is an enormous step towards fostering education and literacy in developing worlds.

Of course, getting a Kindle or e-reader in the hands of these students is only half of the story. Anyone who has used a Kindle or similar e-reader knows these devices are fairly fragile, and if not looked after with great care, can find themselves with a broken screen. Additionally, e-ink screen technology is not backlit, which presents a real problem for a student hoping to read at night when their village doesn’t have electricity.

In fact, I was recently told the story of Naomi, a student in Ghana who just received her very own Kindle and was eager to find out if there was a light she could use in order to be able to study at home. I was struck by how simple this request was and how significant the impact would be on her education.

We’re sending Naomi an ultra protective cover, the M-Edge Latitude Jacket, and our e-Luminator2 booklight (and plenty of AAA batteries!) to ensure her Kindle is well protected and well lit.

I, along with all of the employees at M-Edge are honored to be a part of this significant initiative that will help these students learn and grow as their countries continue to further develop their education system. We look forward to continuing to learn about ways we can continue to give back to not only our community but across the world, with not only our products, but by sharing our love for reading and education.

Dr. Patrick Mish is founder and CEO of M-Edge Accessories. An avid reader, he was fascinated with the developing eReader industry and soon identified an opportunity to create accessories for eReader devices. Since founding M-Edge in 2006, Mish has directed the entrepreneurial growth of the company and continues to lead its current strategic direction.