READ International

HQ Location: 
London

Location of benefit: 
Africa

READ International is a student led charity that works to improve access to educational resources in East Africa. Through a national network of student volunteers we collect disused books from schools, the general public and businesses. We sort the books using innovative ISBN recognition technology.
We then send the most relevant, up-to-date, and high quality books to schools in Tanzania. Any books collected which are not relevant or appropriate to send are sold online or recycled to generate funding.

Tanzania follows a secondary school syllabus almost identical to the UK.
However, schools often lack the resources needed to teach. In Tanzania the average pupil to text book ratio is 5 to 1.

Since our first shipment of books in 2005, we have shipped over one million books to East Africa. We have also renovated 34 school libraries to ensure sustained use of the books. We have distributed books to over 1,000 schools and provided books for over 400,000 school students in East Africa.