As I write this letter, citizens across the US and around the world are protesting police violence and years of injustice against people of color – even as we try to make sense of the impact COVID-19 will have on us going forward. It’s nearly impossible to reflect back on a year of Worldreader progress, let alone cover the 10 years since Colin and I founded the organization.

So rather than focus on the short-term, I’d like to lay out a few beliefs which have guided our work since the beginning, and will guide us for years to come. I hope that in reading these, you’ll understand the relevance of our work not just now, but for many years in the future.

We believe in the power of reading. It’s like a turbo-charger for all other human development: education, health equity, social justice, prosperity, self-reliance – even empathy. Imagine trying to care for your child’s health without being able to access high-quality information. Consider seeking work, but having to hide the fact that it’s hard for you to read basic instructions. And think of how important it is to put yourself in the shoes of someone from completely different circumstances. As we say in our vision statement: Readers build a better world.

We believe in partnership. Nobody ever did anything interesting completely alone. Yes, history is full of the hero myth, and I love reading about great individuals as much as anyone. But if you scratch below the surface, you’ll always find a team of like-minded, like-valued people moving ideas forward. When I look over the past 10 years since Worldreader was founded, I’m fully aware that we would have never helped 13.5 million readers without partnering with organizations like Pencils of Promise, CAMFED, Pearson, Microsoft, Amazon, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Opera Software, and others. (For a great deep-dive into one of these partnerships, have a look at Scaling Storytime featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about our partnership with Pearson and how together we got more mothers reading with their children India.) As the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone, But if you want to go far, go together.”

High impact requires low cost, now more than ever. Reading programs (and education more generally) never have sufficient funding. It’s a structural issue: the benefits of reading can take years to realize, but the costs are immediate. So even though the return on investment is off the charts, it’s hard for political systems to fund them properly. For the past few years, we’ve been hard at work driving down the costs of our work, even as we improve the quality. Our newest program, BookSmart, delivers a high-quality set of 150 digital books onto low-cost tablets and individual mobile phones for less than $0.50/student/month. That’s a cost that’s so accessible, even very vulnerable and underserved communities can afford it, particularly when so many of our donors help subsidize the cost even further.

Learning takes place at home and at school. We’ve seen this for years. One of my favorite moments over the past 10 years took place at the Kibera School for Girls, where one of the parents ran up to me and announced: “Tuesday is my favorite day of the week. It’s when my daughter brings home her e-reader, and reads to herself, to her sister, and to me.” Our work in India doubled-down on this idea, where we worked with mothers and caregivers to read with their children at home on their mobile phones. Our work in Jordan doubled-down on it again, as we worked with refugee parents to keep their children reading wherever they were. And it’s more important now than ever, with 1.5 billion children out of school because of COVID-19. We believe this home-school blended approach will be with us for years, because it reflects reality: most children learn more outside the walls of their schools than within. So increasingly we’re focusing on helping parents help their children. Here’s an audio guide we distribute via WhatsApp in India.

Our work matters more than ever to the most vulnerable – and unfortunately, that’s a growing population. For years, we’ve focused on vulnerable populations. Our history started with work in low- and middle-income countries in Sub Saharan Africa – and even then, we largely avoided working in capital cities, instead focusing on more rural areas like the eastern region of Ghana or libraries in rural Kenya. Many of our partners over the years have taken our work to even more vulnerable populations: refugees in Jordan; prisoners on the coast of Kenya; deaf children in Kakamega, Kenya; physically disabled children in Zimbabwe. Our many projects focused on women and girls, who are so often left behind as technology changes and the world moves forward. Examples include our Girls Read project in Zambia in collaboration with the Population Council, which shows a marked increase in reading ability and self-reliance and our Inspire US project in Ghana, which gave voice to critical issues like gender violence, family planning, and women’s autonomy. 

You’ll see much more of this work going forward. As we said from our earliest days, as a nonprofit, we can and must go where the market is failing. 

Data or it didn’t happen. In our earliest years, we could see our impact with our own eyes. (I still love reading some of our earliest dispatches, like this one here, where we first heard about the importance of including a children’s dictionary into e-readers.) But now that we’ve reached over 13.5 million children, we increasingly get insight from our data. For instance, as I write this, our most-read children’s book of the last week was “Feeling Sad,”— not surprising in a world of COVID-19 as children try to process their feelings. (Meanwhile, young adults are turning to romance and fantasy— clearly somebody wants to escape!) Technology allows us to lower costs and achieve great scale – that’s wonderful. But just as important, it lets us understand how many students are reading above our benchmark of 15 minutes/day, and shines light on the books that are most inspiring and motivational. For all that’s been written about the problems technology brings, it’s important to remember that it can also help us improve, when used properly.

These six principles have guided us from our beginnings back in 2010, and they’ll guide us for years to come. In hard times and in easy times, our goal remains the same – to help billions of people improve their lives. Thanks for being a part of the journey.