welcome to connect we're so glad you could join us because today we have a really wonderful program that i had known very little about and fortunately we found these wonderful creatures sally brennan who's lived in the community for and me and nicole and sally so we are letting people know that there's this effective hopeful creative group that are doing local language publishing and supporting girls education and the general cause of literacy in ten countries in asia and africa we're working especially with families who are living on a dollar or two a day and whose governments are really challenged to have the kind of school situations that we take for granted here in new jersey with so many educational opportunities room to read is about sixteen years old and its mission is to provide local language books published in the children's own languages which i just think is dynamite these are just wonderful books and the children you can well imagine being able to understand these books that look like you and the world that you're living in i don't know i just think it's wonderful in his first i know i haven't heard of any other organization that's really getting into using children's illustrations and words and i don't know sally pretty well nicole is going to give you some of the specifics about how many books how many libraries and i think ranch is going to talk about the public policy of literacy because it's an even bigger topic than getting these beautiful books into the world libraries or into city neighborhoods where typically the parents may not be able to read or write and the schools don't have enough money to create more than basic educational materials for children so well part of the reason that reentry is set apart from other organizations is save utilize the local people to set up the education in the countries they have people who were born there who know the language who know the culture and are versed in the local economy there and that was part of the initiation of the local language books  that they decided to utilize the local talent and hire local authors local illustrators host writers workshops to get people to write languages or books in the local languages and  relevant to their life their daily life so that was part of the book the dream is published over twelve hundred original titles in thirty different languages because if you are  maison thirty different creatures if you're trying to learn how to read it's helpful if you have reading material in your own language to learn from this one which also drove us to create our own publish our own book but it's a cookbook we wanted to engage the local people and get local recipes from local restaurants and chefs and good idea oh yeah and so we decided to publish this cookbook and we're going to launch it a public library in princeton on november thirtieth at six thirty we're going to have a launch party we're going to offer different cookbooks and different features and we've we're very hot happy because we've also brought in the local component we've partnered with the great escape which is a local princeton and the and they're going to underwrite all the costs of printing the books so that one hundred percent of proceeds from the book sale goes to reentry programs amazing one little areas in a typically either it's most of these countries or developing countries where it's india or nepal of vietnam cambodia ghana botswana and all of them have a similar challenge but besides that the people in these countries are really very very motivated to send their children to school and especially girls and i think what really is the barrier to that is pretty much polity and most of these people live under a dollar or two a day and and you know when the challenge is stupid the food on the table school kind of takes a back seat and that's kind of as well room to really came in and you know has been working in a public private something you know we call ourselves as a social activity and a social activist of ours that people are very well trained and support these girls through awareness educational programs and not just girls really it is pretty much right from elementary all the way up to the work that goes into this and the creativity is just wonderful and there's no i wanted to just second what russia had said about the barriers to education because when room to read began they were focused on the literacy and on bringing local language publishing and build and libraries in the longer they stayed in the communities the more they saw that the girls were flourishing in elementary school but then leaving mostly having to do with poverty in middle school so they began the girls education program and nicole will give us the numbers in just a minute but so for a young woman like this who is holding a book away she is going to be given assistance with tuition uniforms books supplies a bicycle if she needs a backpack and should be one of maybe two dozen girls who share a mentor and take extra life skills classes on the weekends or after school to help them learn to make decisions and advocate for themselves and understand their talents and so with our success rate of getting girls to finish high school we find that the public policy in many of our ten countries is for opening up she got so much potential and that was one of the reasons that john started to read because he wanted every child to have the potential to reach their full as a human being possible based on regardless of which country they were born and what socio economic status they were born into he wanted everybody to have access to education so that they could reach their full potential as an adult so with the girls education program again my daughter seventeen and she's heading off to college where is one in four girls around the globe teenage girls are getting married at the teenager and then they're often marrying a with a man that's ten years their senior and then they're in a marriage and they're having children and childbirth as a second leading cause of death in these regions so it's been proven over and over again that if you educate a girl she's going to she's going to marry later she's going to have fewer children she's going to educate those children and for every year she stays in school she earns a twenty percent higher rate of income which she then invest back into the community at a rate of ninety percent so basically by edging educating one girl you can lift an entire village out of poverty and that's what reentry has been doing be it's just it's just remarkable just remarkable and it's just it's not all of a complicated it's really just people caring and working with one another i love it i just think the program is one of the best programs i've heard of in a very very long time room to read and there will be a gathering at the wonderful christian public library on november seventh remember thirty november thirtie d the original version up and basking ridge and sold several hundred copies and put more girls through school and so we had so much fun with it we decided to expand it anding and clued more people from princeton the g m group and great pleasure to just wonderful to know that here we are and we're not just thinking about ourselves we're thinking about the world soon or the global situation hits us this is just wonderful and i think one of the nation chat about one of the important things about the community is it does have a variety of people in it it's very very open to a variety of people coming in from all over the world here we are what we found that when we did our concert planned for a world of music sometimes eleven princeton high school that the musicians that we recruited in the community were so generous in their participation and ranch and i will tell you a little bit about the diversity we've really had music all over the world absolutely and you know we had a world famous of our came down from toronto to play this amazing really care and people do believe that education and literacy issues are truly global issues and it is yours and my yes it's not somebody else's it's right and i think that is something amazing about this just for about a one percent ok i guess we hear about various one percent's but there's a movement in the corporate world called the one percent where a lot of young and upcoming companies are donating one percent of something that they do where they have to a charity of their choice and they pick the charity so it might be one percent of product it might be one percent of net profits it might be one percent of the glory time volunteering so we're very fortunate that ad tech chose us as their one percent yes but i can't say enough about the fact that princeton speaks many languages if you walk the streets  and on a vacation in nepal when he was working as microsoft's asian mike and the managers getting a little burned out and thought oh i better take a trip and so he went hiking in nepal and then a schoolmaster who took him to his school which had no books and asked him if he would come back with some and after a year of effort and a warm response he came back with thousands of hardcover beautifully illustrated softcover children's books realised that they didn't need books in a language that they couldn't read they needed their own images and their own stories in their own languages and he left microsoft but he took his friends with him across the computer industry and to this day there's been a real warm response from young companies and established companies and in fact it's the bill and melinda gates foundation that does the monitoring an evaluation of our program which is wonderful if something that moderated is just so important people really do respect it if you moderated your program so a lot of research and feedback and changing programs  to keep the success rate for these individual children as high as possible but over the last few years we've met some of the country's leaders from this country sound as many statistics as we give you those country leaders know the names of their request you to come out and support room to read and we always need more while in tears especially in the princeton area and for me one of the biggest reasons when i decided to give my time and energy i'm a busy working mom like a lot of us here  that it's a company that really uses its money very carefully we always kind of kid ourselves that we're cheap and cheerful but beyond that we are always very focused on the return on investment i'm very proud to say that our room to read for every dollar that is that is given as as a donation we spend you know pretty much about over eighty five cents back to the school these schools and these communities so we really keep our expenses very very low unlike a lot of other large charities and there's another thing that made me feel very good that i was not you know giving money to a charity where and looking to be a part of this movement and i would encourage to everybody to be actually i'm i could never do more and i my calling to room to read was i met a i met someone who had been to hear john speak and she brought the book back to our town and i read the book and was immediately engaged i grew up in a family the value volunteering i heard i was a candy striper with my grandmother telling me on the how it all goes yeah and continued to work in a volunteer capacity at some point and so my goal is not only to bring literacy to everyone which completely makes sense but also to instill in the youth of today the value of all in the hearing and on terrorism because your purpose is to help others that's the that's that's the key to happiness according to me so i've been there and vald with the high schools and different news groups in basking ridge where i live to instill in them a sense of volunteering if maybe we're the trees not their thing but volunteering as a calling is definitely well worth it throughout your whole life well i do think one of the things that has grown in our communities is the fact that children are given credit in their schools for being community service  that's really wonderful i mean many nonprofits profit from that and i would hope that reid would also and the the world is getting smaller and smaller as we understand and one of the things that  i've also tried to convey is that globally it's five bucks or trying to find globally if kids are going on abroad study abroad i read and so that the world is getting smaller and smaller and it's good to have a realization of what the other half of the world was going on there and to be aware of and be supportive it's just it's pretty new and wonderful i mean i just had met someone yesterday  read that u n meant to establish the millennium development goals and making goals having to do with education and poverty and eradicating aids healthcare and then just last year in twenty fifteen they've revised that list and made seventeen sustainable development goals and two of those are geared towards literacy and gender equality and education perfect those are the two great here and gender equality and education is just well i can't thank you all enough this is just been wonderful and i'd like to carry on and we should just keep in touch because the program is growing right when we're going to see the girls and we do have a website so that one can log on and nicole will give you the address or you can go through the room to read's global web site to the chapters in two central new jersey to see what our next events are look for the next carnegie in october find this at the library but we're happy to come to schools to businesses to places of worship to talk about room to read and no contribution would be too small of a book like this can be created and put on a shelf for about a dollar and passed through the hands of many many children and our girls education programs wonderful investment that pays a lifetime of dividends not just for the girl but for her community and for the exists can be summarized in six words world change starts with educated children we believe the best way to create long term systemic change in the developing world is through the power of education specifically literacy and gender equality literacy is the key to a better life when children cannot read or write their deny the opportunity to reach their full potential this is especially true for girls who are most at risk for remaining uneducated and illiterate in the developing world especially asia africa where we work children go to school with blank walls few black and white textbooks and no children's books teachers are under trained and often managing a crowded classrooms at home parents generally cannot read or write it's a pretty critical situation we need to think big about this by finding ways to be focused innovative and results oriented if we can get children reading independently if we can invest in equal education for girls we're also going to impact so many other issues education is a game changer most people know we build schools the stabber school libraries and publish children's books but what we do goes so much deeper we train teachers and librarians on the best practices for literacy instruction to ensure strong early grade reading habits are developed we provide reading instruction materials and on site teacher coaching we were candid hand with families and local communities and governments to ensure they are actively involved in the long term sustainability of their children's education of girls tried in a secondary school is when she is most at risk of dropping out that's what we focus on educating girls but to us this means more than just earning a diploma it means making sure that a girl gains critical life skills support from our community and access to a female mentor so that she can confidently succeed in life after graduation nothing is more important than making sure our programs are effective helping children learn and are maximizing the investments that so many people have made in our war room to read engages in extensive monitoring evaluation and research to make sure that we're getting our programs right and continually improving our work we live in a world with everything for generations to come