Keep Children Reading – Global South
A distance-learning initiative to support vulnerable children across the Global South during the Covid-19 education crisis and beyond.
When Covid-19 forced students across the globe to stay home, we launched Keep Children Reading.
Worldreader’s Keep Children Reading initiative brings a free library of digital books to parents and caregivers via their mobile phones. This library enables children to continue learning from the safety of their homes while schools are disrupted.
Supporters, governments, and partners came together to help the world’s most vulnerable students.
As part of the initiative, we are:
Partnering with telecom providers in Ghana and South Africa to “zero-rate” Worldreader’s apps so that data fees don’t apply to reading our books
Working with the Peruvian government’s Ministry of Education as part of their “Aprendo En Casa” distance learning program
Collaborating with publishers to curate a new collection of digital books that have helped children avoid and cope with COVID-19
So far, we’ve brought digital books to over 500,000 households during Covid-19.
Since the global onset of Covid-19 in late March, we’ve helped thousands of students continue to read, develop essential skills, and build resilience.
500,000+
families
reached
120,000+
active readers
on BookSmart
75,000+
hours reading
and counting
The Keep Children Reading program offers a rich collection of books for children.
The library always starts with a free base collection – 100+ great local and international books.
For partners who want to offer even more to children in schools or education programs, Worldreader is offering the premium solutions for Africa, MENA, LATAM, and India with hundreds of books, training, reading data and insights, and partner branding. Contact us to learn more.
The collection can be accessed via our new BookSmart app.
BookSmart is our purpose-built app for children. Key features of the app include:
Age-appropriate books
Stories are curated for children from birth through primary grades
Local language content
100s of books are available in English, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish
Offline reading
Books can be saved for offline reading for those with limited data
Works on any phone
Even with feature phones, parents or caregivers can access books
Low data costs
The light app, optimized for all connection speeds, keeps data costs low
Keep Children Reading supports children at home while schools are closed.
As of the beginning of October, over 600 million students remain out of school due to country-wide closures and disruptions caused by Covid-19. With each passing month, students experience greater learning loss. Worldreader’s Keep Children Reading initiative gives them a way to continue reading and learning.
