Solution

Therefore, we have developed an innovative model that provides a practical, cost efficient, sustainable, grassroots approach that involves women and the community to increase reading levels among children 0-10 by focusing on the readaloud experience to plant the love of reading. WLR program constitutes training local women, men and youth to hold readaloud sessions in public spaces in their neighborhoods where books are routinely read aloud to children. WLR chooses books that are age-appropriate, attractive, neutral in content, in the native language of the child. In addition to promoting the experience of reading, WLR empowers women, men and youth readers to become leaders in their communities, builds ownership in the children and community members and serves as a platform for raising awareness on issues such as health and environment through reading books on the particular themes. The model can be replicated anywhere. It uses an existing common public space e.g. the mosque or community center. It doesn’t need a bookshelf since all books are given out, requiring only a collection of books that are read again and again. The woman who reads aloud doesn’t have to be highly educated and trained. The women receiving training are required to “pay it forward”, by sharing newly acquired knowledge and training to another woman to become a reader creating a domino effect. The trained reader is welcomed because she is from the neighborhood. The community starts to respect women and supports their roles as leaders and future change agents. The community also starts to invest in the collection, building ownership and responsibility of the library. Reading has traditionally been considered boring or a waste of time outside of academic or religious contexts. WLR is changing attitudes and letting people know that reading is fun. WLR is achieving impact at scale because WLR is a simple effective product that appeals to its market of mothers and children. WLR depends on networks of women who already resemble a movement to bring about social change through reading. WLR aims to develop long term cultural change. WLR isn’t delivering services which need support systems, it’s creating capabilities in thousands of local women enabling them to be creative for themselves. Organizations need hierarchs but movements need causes, shared values, common goals to pull them together and give them a purpose, reading is the means but the cause is to get young children to realize they can and should think for themselves. The model is formulated in a way that each person can tailor the model to fit their culture, their needs while maintaining the essence of the model, aiding in building ownership to the movement and sustainability. The We Love Reading model has evolved into a framework to nurture social entrepreneurship. Young men and women are discovering the potential inside them to become changemakers in their communities through the library they establish in their neighbourhood. They have started their own initiatives serving their communities by identifying the problems that bother them and coming up with grassroots solutions to develop their country. WLR has tangible outcomes to transform, in a short period of time, a whole generation of children into readers who love, enjoy, and respect books through the establishment of a library in every neighborhood in the world, whose impact on development of society is immeasurable.