Initiative Name: Read to Kids by Worldreader
Organization: Worldreader
Website: www.worldreader.org
App Link: https://goo.gl/B1BpjG

FOR THE LOVE OF READING

Many children in India are unprepared or not fully prepared to start school. Lack of school readiness negatively impacts children’s learning outcomes and has contributed to a national learning crisis. Starting from birth, simple interventions such as parents reading aloud to their children can be powerful antidotes to poor learning environments. Reading aloud to young children narrows the gaps in learning and introduces a world of ideas, vocabulary and concepts to young children. Despite this, many poor households in India lack a culture of reading and have limited exposure to books.

Worldreader, in partnership with Pearson and Project Literacy, launched the Read to Kids programme 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 digitised a collection of over 400 Hindi and English storybooks and gave free access to them via their Read to Kids app. The mobile application is designed to work responsively on a wide range of mobile phones, even with inconsistent 2G networks.

This app was distributed via networks of community-based partners committed to early childhood development. It is designed as a behaviour change campaign to raise awareness about the value of reading to children, leverage social media and digital advertising. In one year, this programme has reached out to over 2,20,000 households in the Delhi-NCR region.