Worldreader Kids

Program Overview

It is estimated that 225 million children around the world are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential and falling permanently behind by the age of five. Lack of regular participation in and exposure to early learning both at home and in early learning institutions leads to both language and cognitive delays.

Worldreader Kids leverages affordable technology, data analytics, and partnerships with publishers, corporations and NGOs to empower parents, caregivers and teachers to read regularly with young children. By providing free, culturally-relevant digital books via the Worldreader Kids app and tablet app and by fostering cultures of reading, Worldreader Kids helps to mitigate the effects of inequitable access to quality education.

Read to Kids India

Worldreader, in partnership with Pearson and Project Literacy, launched the Read to Kids program in low-income communities in Delhi with the goal of getting more parents reading to young children. Working with Indian and international publishers, Worldreader curated and digitized a collection of over 500 Hindi and English storybooks and gave free access to them via our Worldreader Kids app. Our mobile application was distributed via networks of community-based partners committed to early childhood development and through a media campaign. In the first year, we reached over 200,000 households in the Delhi NCR region.

Tuta Tuta

While the Syrian Civil War has interrupted many Syrian and Jordanian children’s education, parents have a tool at their disposition to keep children reading: their mobile phones. The Tuta Tuta project will build on the success of our pilot in India to bring Arabic children’s books to 50,000 households across Jordan via the Worldreader Kids app. We will also work with educators and publishers to curate a psychosocial collection of books intended to help explore emotions and generate healing. We plan to launch Tuta Tuta in early 2018 with support from the Jordanian Ministry of Education and funding from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.