Skoll Entrepreneur(s): John Wood
Change(s) Addressed: Economic & Social Equity

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DESCRIPTION:

In 1998, John Wood was trekking in Nepal as a holiday from his hectic life as a senior Microsoft executive. A teacher invited him to visit a school. John was saddened by the library, a small crumbling building almost completely devoid of books. Thinking about how much his hometown library had affected his life, John returned a short time later on a yak with more than 3,000 books. In early 2000, John founded Room to Read. John explained that “the library in Nepal — a supposedly one-off project — has instead morphed into my life’s passion. I’ve never been happier, worked harder or believed more strongly in an organization.” RtR has been honored four times with the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award, a Draper Richards Fellowship and Time magazine’s Asian Heroes Award. John was also chosen as the first Kellogg School “Alumni Social Entrepreneur of the Year.”

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS OF 2010

• Room to Read brings the lifelong gift of education (the best long-term ticket out of poverty) to children in 9 developing countries in Asia and Africa by building over 1,100 schools and opening over 9,000 libraries. Over 4 million children now have access to this network.
• Recognizing the need for children’s books in languages where there has not been a market for them, we have now published 431 local language children’s book titles. These are all original titles, by local authors and artists. We have put more than 7 million books into the hands of young readers and published in over 20 languages, ranging from Lao to Khmer to Xhosa and Zulu.
• Our scholarship program will have over 10,000 girls on long-term scholarships by the end of this year. 98% of the girls in the program pass to the next grade, and many of the earliest scholarship recipients have now matriculated to university.