READ International

READ International began life in 2004 as a Book Project based at Nottingham University, founded by a group of socially entrepreneurial students following a gap year teaching in Tanzania.  Now there are close to 1,000 student volunteers involved, operating from a network of over 40 university sites across the UK.

We now collect books of many shapes, size or subject from anyone throughout the UK. Our volunteers sort the books and send the most relevant, up-to-date, and high quality books to schools in Tanzania and Uganda.  Any books collected that are not relevant or appropriate to send are sold online or recycled to generate funding.

Tanzania and Uganda follow a secondary school syllabus almost identical to the UK, but teachers often lack the resources needed to teach. In the UK newer editions of books inevitably replace the old (very often only a couple of years old though), which makes for good quality, but technically out of date textbooks filling up school store rooms or ending up in landfill. We send them to where they are really needed, improving access to education for thousands of children in East Africa. 

READ has grown rapidly since we launched on the national stage in the House of Commons in 2007. Since we first sent books in 2005, we have shipped a total of 1,147,241 books to Tanzania and Uganda and are supporting the renovation of dozens of school libraries so that access to these books is also improved.