Room to Read

Room to Read - Books and International Development going hand in hand.



I’m currently reading a book by a chap called John Wood. Room to Read. I was nearly talked out of it by the lady in the bookshop and steered towards something else that would have had a similar thread. I’m so glad I wasn’t.

This is a fascinating read. Full of interesting stories about how one man give up a top end job at Microsoft to set up the charity, Room to Read. The charity was originally set up when John went trekking in Nepal and went to a school, only to find that their library was locked away from the children and only contained a few books. Books that were irrelevant to young Nepalese children to learn from. Room to Read literally does that. Initially it sent books to Nepal and now it builds school, provides scholarships for girls and works in many developing countries around the world.

John mixes in a lot of his wisdom from Microsoft with the tales from getting the charity set up. There is a lot of feel good stories and John mentions that he puts a lot of working hours and effort into the Charity, but he does make it seem like can be easy to raise fund from your network of friends. Thinking through it some more, John is a very well connected person, he knows a lot of people with plenty of spare cash. In his position at Microsoft and no doubt through his education, he would have met a lot of these people that helped him initially to get the funding in for the charity. I thought that I would never have friends who could organise a fund raiser and bring on over £10,000. Perhaps I do them an injustice.

Go and read the book. It is a story of one mans passion that enthuses many others, one that has a huge amount of drive and tenacity and has a very clear head of his goals and a huge amount of business sense. An enlightening read, drawing together a couple of my keen interests, business, the outdoors and helping people.


John may well have been in a well connected position, he may well have made a fair amount of money working at Microsoft, but he put this all to a very important and very selfless use, helping to educate young people from developing counties.