Some years ago, Worldreader started their work in Africa, with the aim of bringing both free ereaders (Kindles) and free ebooks to the rural poor of Africa. This has gone from strength to strength, with active support from governments in a number of African states, local and international publishers and authors as well. These Kindles were given to kids in rural schools to start with, so the target was kids rather than adults, though of course many adults (parents etc) shared the ebooks on those Kindles. They also produced a simple app that works on any relatively simple smart phone, mainly 3G models, which allows people to download and read any of the now many thousands of free ebooks that Worldreader offers in a range of African languages and English.
This app is now being used by people all over the world, and has proven itself to be an enormous success, and also proven that the original idea behind Worldreader is correct, people want to read.
Presumably seeing the success of this idea in Africa, the US government has just launched their own version of the Worldreader concept, known as Open eBooks, the idea is essentially the same as that of Worldreader, except here it will all be based around a free ereader app that kids can get from their local library, and via this app, be able to borrow ebooks from a huge list of both current publications and classical ones.
I can do no better than to let Michelle Obama describe the idea in this video.
As you can see, this is a superb initiative and should bring so much pleasure into so many lives, especially lives that normally would not really have access to this pleasure, Or more likely, not feel comfortable with the idea of using a library.
You can find out more about these initiatives by following these links:-
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OZTHOUGHTS 