Literacy

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in collaboration with The Asia Foundation and other partners, launched a nationwide reading campaign called #ReadEveryDay. This unique campaign encourages families, teachers, and librarians to create fun and positive reading experiences with at least 100,000 children every day between March 6-15. The launc… Read more

The Nikkei Asian Review highlights The Asia Foundation’s Let’s Read initiative in an op-ed assessing how Indonesia is improving literacy across the country through local technology-driven solutions. Impactful reading programs, such as the Asia Foundation’s Let’s Read initiative, which brings together communities and technology to build early readin… Read more

The Khmer Times publishes an opinion piece written by Foundation’s senior digital program officer in Cambodia Sorn Nimul Khut on the crucial role of libraries for instilling knowledge and skills in young students. The young learners of today, are our communities future leaders. The Asia Foundation has remarked, “books give free rein to young people… Read more

The most valuable skills children can gain in school are not specific to jobs or technology, but rather skills associated with creative problem-solving and curiosity. Words like “fun” and “children’s storybooks” are not often used when discussing how to prepare today’s youth for the high-tech jobs of tomorrow, but they need to be. The most valuable… Read more

Today, The Asia Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Cambodia’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), and Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE) to implement the Books for Cambodia program. Over the next five years, the program will distribute high-quality English storybooks and educational resource books to 1,000… Read more

Traditional classrooms in ASEAN countries are exceptional for turning out high-performing students, well-skilled in memorization, recitation, and deference to seniority, an approach some say doesn’t equip students for a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and rapidly changing world. According to the World Economic Forum, young people will best succeed in the… Read more

Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands, with around 700 languages spoken across the archipelago. For all of its rich and diverse cultural history, Indonesia does not have a long and deeply embedded tradition of children’s literature. Access to quality children’s books is difficult, especially in remote and underserved areas. On Sept. 16, 2017,… Read more

A cornerstone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is achieving quality, inclusive education for all. Yet, a recent UNESCO report indicates that 40 percent of the global population does not have access to education in a language they can speak or understand. This is a long-running challenge in Thailand, home to a diversity of languages co… Read more

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of International Literacy Day and a half century later there’s much to celebrate. However, one of the persistent problems faced by schools in developing countries still today is a lack of one of the most essential ingredients to encourage reading: engaging children’s books to build literacy from an early age. In… Read more

Northern Thailand, a region famous for its natural beauty, hill tribe communities, and trekking routes through lush jungle terrain, is home to a diversity of languages and cultures comprising approximately 59 unique ethnolinguistic groups. Standard Thai is currently the country’s only official language and the primary language of instruction in pub… Read more

Mongolia is currently a land in economic flux. Fallen revenues from the mining sector and potential bracing measures from the newly elected government point to economic uncertainty ahead. While investment in various sectors may inevitably be delayed, one area that should continue to be a priority is education. The nearly two-thirds of Ulaanbaatar’s… Read more

Ruby Hembrom (left) at the World Delhi Book Fair. Five years ago, Ruby Hembrom gave up a high-paying career in the IT sector to start her own publishing company to preserve the culture and historical heritage of India’s indigenous (Adivasi) community. Hembrom, who spent the first four years of her life in rural Jharkhand learning Santali as her nat… Read more

Cambodia marked its first National Reading Day on March 11 – a public event that calls on Cambodians to embrace a love of reading. The event was one of the many recent steps taken by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MoEYS) to improve the quality of education in Cambodia.

Since the end of the socialist regime in the early 1990s, urban migration in Mongolia has continued to play an outsized role in the country’s evolving economic and social identity. With 45 percent of Mongolia’s traditionally nomadic population now living in Ulaanbaatar, public resources, especially those for schools and education, have been stretch… Read more

On October 11, global communities will mark the International Day of the Girl Child to celebrate girls’ rights and to recognize the achievements and shortcomings since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals…

The village of Tanou lies in a quiet corner of Cambodia, about 13 kilometers down a dusty road off National Highway 1 as you head towards the Mekong Delta from Phnom Penh. Trees provide a canopy of shade for most of the way to the village, beating back the blazing sun and screening the vast, partially flooded rice paddies that stretch to the horizon on either side.

It has been more than a century since the world first celebrated March 8 as International Women’s Day. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women when representatives from 189 governments signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action…

Publisher U Thant Thaw Kaung, head of the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation and the mobile library project under the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, recently visited The Asia Foundation’s headquarters in San Francisco as part of a three-week study tour…

By many metrics, Bangladesh’s development trajectory is a unique success story, especially since the 1990s when democratic rule was reinstated and extensive economic reforms were made. Poverty incidence has fallen from 60 percent to around 30 percent.

Libraries and reading have a special place in Myanmar society. Yangon, the country’s largest city, is teeming with book vendors and libraries. The American Center and British Council libraries were venerated sources of up-to-date publications…

Despite five decades of near-isolation, the culture and appetite for education and reading is still very much alive for the people of Myanmar. The country maintains one of the highest literacy rates in Southeast Asia – 92.7 percent, according to government figures.

As we contemplate the triumphs and remaining challenges in improving literacy this International Literacy Day, consider the fascinating case of Myanmar. The country is one of the poorest in Southeast Asia, with decaying infrastructure and an economy that is just now starting to pick up after decades of stagnation.

As International Literacy Day approaches, the matter of literacy remains an enormous challenge around the world, including in Asia’s youngest nation, Timor-Leste. Amid the competing development agendas for this democratizing, fast-developing, and oil-rich nation, education, and literacy in particular, too often falls by the wayside.

Victor, a middle-aged resident of the Western Kenyan village of Koru, watched me page through my old Nokia feature phone. I was in Koru to launch a program at a nearby school for Worldreader, an organization that brings e-books to places and people underserved by print books. This was one of the few breaks I had during the launch…

In developing countries, one of the impediments to early childhood education is the availability of high-quality, age-appropriate reading material in local languages. Children’s book publishing is limited by the lack of specialized skills among local publishers, authors, and illustrators, and a consumer base that can afford extracurricular books. To address this gap, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program and Room to Read are partnering to expand access to compelling and culturally relevant early reading material to children in under-served communities throughout developing Asia.

On June 9, the Zorig Foundation held its annual Young Women Leaders Event, which brought together 115 young women recipients of the Shirin Pandju Merali scholarship program. The recipients had a chance to meet one another and to hear the experiences of three successful women who rose to the top in spite of barriers…

Yesterday marked the 18th World Book and Copyright Day, first introduced by UNESCO in 1995, in celebration of books, authors, and the joys of reading. It’s also an occasion to reflect on the importance of education, especially as a driver of poverty reduction.

A delegation from The Asia Foundation, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), and International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) spent time in Burma (also known as Myanmar) last week to hear from citizens and representatives from government, civil society, and libraries…

The Asia Foundation’s Asian American Exchange unit and Books for Asia are currently conducting a 10-day observation program around northern California for 14 librarians from nine Asian countries. While in San Francisco, In Asia editor Alma Freeman caught up with two librarians from Burma…

This International Literacy Day, Sept. 8, 2012, marks the culmination of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UILD), an initiative launched in 2003 to increase literacy levels and develop literate environments worldwide.

I recently took a trip into the heart of Malaysian Borneo to visit some of the most remote schools that The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia serves. Borneo is a large island located north of Java, Indonesia. In the spring of 2011, we started a partnership with PACOS Trust…

Like many, I was saddened to learn of Neil Armstrong’s death in August. He was 82. When Mr. Armstrong made his “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” I was a 12-year-old boy growing up in New Jersey.

In the lead-up to International Literacy Day on September 8, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program launched Storytime in Asia, a month-long campaign that celebrates the transformative power of children’s books by providing critically needed reading material to some of the world’s poorest students.

Last week, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia launched an online campaign with Pearson Foundation’s We Give Books initiative to help bring 5,000 new children’s books to schools in rural Indonesia. For each book read online, We Give Books will donate one new book to support…

“Just because they are poor and isolated doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be the next Bill Gates,” said Shahed Keyes, the founder of Subornogram Foundation in Bangladesh, while introducing me to lively students at a school he started on the remote island of Mayadip.

Internet users in Laos are estimated at only 7 percent of the population as of 2010, the last time this data was gathered. But, despite how low this seems, that is double the number of users than in 2008. And, as the economy continues to grow, internet usage is steadily climbing in Laos.

Three years after the end of decades-long armed conflict in Sri Lanka, there are new government-sponsored efforts afoot to encourage people to speak both national languages – Sinhala and Tamil – and to promote English as a common link language.

As Sri Lanka emerges from a decades-long civil war, employment opportunities are rapidly shifting from the public to the private and technology sectors, where speaking English is required. But, for many Sri Lankans living in impoverished outskirts or the war-torn North, English-language books are a luxury and remain out of reach.

Oprah Winfrey looked nervous. Making her way across the stage, she stopped to smile for the herd of photographers and then quickly sat down in her chair. Waiting for the applause to die down, she folded her hands in her lap. This was Oprah’s first visit to India; the press has tracked her every move as she traveled across the country…

For three days in December, individuals from a range of industries gathered at the 3rd Annual Big Ideas Fest to explore the future of education. In a venue overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, teachers, administrators, and representatives from policy and advocacy groups…

Sitting at the back of the classroom, with one eye on her mobile phone, Shanti looks like a typical Indonesian high school student. But Shanti is not here to learn; instead, she’s a tutor herself. In a makeshift classroom constructed from two old shipping containers stacked on top of each other, Shanti tutors first grade students at the Master Community Learning Center in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta. “It’s a great experience,” the 17-year-old says. “I can contribute to the education of Indonesian children as well as help relieve some of the pressure on the learning center.”

On September 8, The Asia Foundation commemorated International Literacy Day for the first time in Timor-Leste. The Foundation partnered with the Secretary of State for Youth and Sport, Alola Foundation, Care International, and Timor Aid to host a book fair for primary and secondary students.

Stories of Vietnam’s rapid development make headlines in local and international media regularly these days. In 1985, the average per-capita income in Vietnam was $130, making it one of the five poorest countries in the world. Now, with average incomes over $1,000, Vietnam’s highly literate population…

As the world celebrates International Literacy Day on September 8, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia officer in Nepal, Shameera Shrestha, caught up with the director of the American Library at the U.S. Embassy of Kathmandu, Prakash Thapa, on where he sees the future of Nepal’s library system…

When Ireneo O. Pinzon and his family moved in the 1960s to Isulan, a rural town in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines, not a single library existed. Even 50 years later, the Southern Philippines continues to lag behind the more urban islands to the north.