Room to Read is a global nonprofit working to address educational, gender and economic inequities affecting children around the world. Since its launch in 2000, the NGO has deployed almost US$1bn to deliver foundational learning to more than 52 million children, including thousands across Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.

It’s literacy pillar includes teacher training, publishes local language books, and develops school and community libraries, and through its Girls Education Programme, it delivers life skills education, mentorship and other community engagement.

Room to Read’s latest initiative, She Creates Change, is a global multimedia storytelling campaign designed to empower adolescent girls with educational content and life skills.

For CEO, Geetha Murali, the mission to empower girls is deeply personal. Both her grandmothers were child brides, but her mother, the eldest of seven, refused. “She redirected an entire lineage towards alternative futures, and I am a living example of the ripple effect,” Murali tells the Shaping Philanthropy podcast.

“If it's not enough to see educating girls as a moral imperative, it is also just smart economics,” she explained. “Every extra year of school increases a girl's future income.”

Room to Read has been working in the Middle East for several years and has recently scaled up its work in response to regional conflicts.

In Gaza, the NGO partnered with ANERA to distribute locally-authored Palestinian children's books and educational materials to displaced families. In Lebanon, Room to Read has supported 125 non-formal education centres, providing 69,000 children with both books and safe spaces for learning.

And in Jordan, through a partnership with the Queen Rania Foundation, it has established 43 public school libraries and adapted 40 Arabic storybooks for national use.

In November, Room to Read announced it was launching a US$75m fundraising initiative to expand its African programming (currently in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia) and deliver foundational literacy and life skills to eight million children on the continent.

Listen to the full interview with Anissa Punjani to hear more from Murali about how reading transforms lives and why investing in girls’ education is the smartest move for global progress.

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Circle is a partnership between Philanthropy Age and the Pearl Initiative. It is supported by the Gates Foundation.