Worldreader, a charity who have been busy giving ereaders and thousands of ebooks to schools in a number of sub-saharan African countries – chiefly in poorer areas have just released a report about the impact their ereaders (and ebooks of course) have had in Kenya.
After several years of providing Kenyan Libraries with ereaders (Kindles) and a wide range of ebooks, by African authors and international authors as well, they have just commissioned a study that has just shown the following wonderful results:-
- Monthly library visits nearly tripled across the pilot sites
- 20,000+ patrons were reached through e-reader training
- 254 library-initiated community events were held
- 84% of patrons reported reading more
And all of this in a country that hardly had any serious reading or libraries before this.
This is just one of the many wonderful results that Worldreader have achieved in a number of countries, always in the poorer areas.
And not only do they spread (at no cost to the recipients) Kindles and ebooks all over the country, but they also have created an App that enables anyone to access their extensive library of ebooks via their mobile phones (which are ubiquitous in Africa) and have this given the gift of reading to an amazing number of people all over the world as the App is not restricted to any particular country.
Here are a couple of statistics that give an idea of how successful their work has been so far. Bear in mind that they have only been active for about 5 years so far.
- 185,137 PEOPLE READING EVERY MONTH
- 54 COUNTRIES
- 15,519 BOOK TITLES AVAILABLE
- 2,201,405 PEOPLE REACHED SINCE 2010
To find out much more about their superb work, here is the link to their website, well worth a visit I reckon.
Worldreader: http://www.worldreader.org/
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OZTHOUGHTS 