Room to Read partners with local communities throughout the developing world to provide quality educational opportunities by establishing libraries, creating local language children's literature, constructing schools, providing education to girls, and establishing computer labs. We seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education empowers people to improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries, and future generations. Through the opportunities that only education can provide, we strive to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time.

We are non-governmental, non-religious and work with many local NGOs and community based organizations to implement our programs. We currently work in Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Zambia - countries with a desperate lack of resources to educate their children. In 2007, we began our expansion into Bangladesh.
Since our inception, Room to Read's worldwide team has impacted over 1.7 million children by constructing more than 440 schools, establishing over 5,100 libraries, publishing 226 new children's book titles in 11 local languages, and putting over 4,000 girls onto long-term, holistic scholarships. We are one of ten non-profits to have won the Fast Company / Monitor Group Social Capitalist award five years in a row and have been featured in a variety of media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and PBS.

Room to Read has an annual budget of approximately US$22 million, and our global staff numbers over 175; both of these figures will continue to grow rapidly in 2008. Our global headquarters is located in San Francisco, our Asia Regional Office is located in New Delhi, and we have program offices in Colombo, Ho Chi Minh City, Kathmandu, Lusaka, New Delhi, Pretoria, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane. Our long-term goal is to help 10 million children to gain the lifelong gift of education.