The journey of 94,500 e-books: from our offices in San Francisco and into the hands of thousands of children in Kenya.

What an incredible two weeks at Worldreader!

We’ve got a new e-reader program in Ghana impacting 1800 children and families. We’ve also launched a new program in Nairobi, Kenya, changing the lives of 500 children. And today we’re thrilled to share with you that in partnership with the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International sponsored by USAID, we’ve just launched e-reader programs in twenty schools (20!) in Kisumu, Kenya.

That means over 3000 children and families will now have access to over 94,000 e-books. 

Known as the Primary Math and Reading Initiative (PRIMR), this project is part of a partnership between USAID and the Government of Kenya designed to dramatically improve the language and mathematics skills of 3 million Kenyan children by the end of Grade Two by 2015.

One aspect of this project that we are very proud of is that digital textbooks, storybooks and reference material in English, Swahili and Dholuo are provided to young primary students between the ages of 7 and 9. With this project, RTI is directly addressing a research supported fact that students who cannot read well in primary are likely to do poorly in the Kenya Certificate of Primary School (KCPE), or to drop out of school altogether.

The launches were full of excitement as local government officials, church leaders, school management committees, education officials, community leaders, parents and pupils all attended this historic moment. Most heartwarming is to hear stories of our connections and impact: our Kenyan colleagues have been encouraging parents to let their children read to them while they’re cooking if they don’t otherwise have time, a novel idea to Kenyan mothers that they quickly warmed up to.

Congratulations to our team in Kenya for their hard work in launching all twenty programs and stay tuned for more updates from this project.