Room to Read accredited as Great Place to Work for second time

Room to Read Sri Lanka is awarded as a Great Place to Work for the second time in a row. The certification is given by Great Place to Work Sri Lanka. Great Place to Work is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures with its headquarter in the USA. Through proprietary assessment tools, advisory services and certification programs, including Best Workplaces lists and workplace reviews, Great Place to Work provides the benchmarks, framework, and expertise needed to create, sustain, and recognise outstanding workplace cultures.

Room to Read

Room to Read is a global non-profit organisation founded in 2000 with the belief that, world change starts with educated children. It envisions a world in which all children can pursue quality, holistic education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their countries and economies. Room to Read conducts its programs at two critical stages of learning. One program is for early primary education for children to learn how to read and write with comprehension and instil a habit of reading, while the second is to support girls complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in school and beyond. In Sri Lanka, Room to Read began its journey in 2005 followed by the devastating Tsunami and have transformed over one million children’s lives thus far. Globally, the organisation supports over 18 million children receive quality education. 

Impact in Sri Lanka

Room to Read’s innovative Reading Development Program ensures that children in primary schools gain reading development holistically, have libraries filled with books in local languages, as well as teachers and librarians who are trained on how to engage a classroom of eager, young learners. By the end of grade 2, children in Room to Read’s Reading Development Program read 2 to 3 times as fast and read with 87% greater comprehension than their peers in non-Room to Read program schools. In Sri Lanka, 59,100 primary school children in disadvantaged communities are currently benefiting from this program, making an impact on 2,109 schools across the country.

Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program helps girls stay in school longer, progress towards the completion of secondary school, and acquire skills and agency they need to make informed choices about their lives and realise their potential. This program ensures that girls are equipped with life skills such as leadership, communication, financial literacy, etc. so that they can make independent, informed decisions about life choices. In a study conducted by Room to Read in 2017 about its program participants in Hatton, it was discovered that they have a 95% advancement rate, with 70% progressing to tertiary education or employment. 

The organisation has supported over 5,600 girls to date, changing gender paradigms in communities and strengthening the support for girls’ education that will carry forward in generations.

Books for early readers are often limited or non-existent in disadvantaged communities. Thus, as a children’s book publisher, Room to Read creates books that readers at various levels can enjoy. These books are written and illustrated by local artists, fostering local book publishing, while the stories are culturally relevant and adaptive. So far, Room to Read Sri Lanka has published 223 story books in both Sinhala and Tamil. In 2019, Room to Read Sri Lanka launched its first non-fiction books in Sinhala and in 2020, it aims to enhance the collection by authoring books in Tamil. Earlier this year, Room to Read partnered with the Ministry of Education to develop a teacher-guide manual for primary educators, in order to enhance their knowledge and teaching methods on reading development.

Education endures during COVID-19

When COVID-19 struck Sri Lanka and schools began to close, the organisation came up with swift contingency measures to ensure that education endures and remains undisrupted among its program participants and students across the country. Thus, Room to Read connected with students via several platforms. Having worked with the Ministry of Education (MOE) since its beginning, Room to Read began collaborating with the Ministry along with other NGOs to print and distribute work books for Grade 1 and 2 students nationwide during COVID-19 school closures. 

Since online learning was encouraged as part of social distancing, Room to Read converted its books to read aloud videos that are currently posted on its local Facebook and Instagram accounts to enable children island wide to continue reading at home and develop a habit of reading. Primary grade students can also access Room to Read’s digital library called the Literacy Cloud which comprises nearly 200 unique titles that are available to read online. But not all students have access to the internet. Hence, Room to Read partnered with Sirasa and Shakthi FM to reach out to students and parents across the country with literacy instruction tips to improve learning at home. Their Facebooks accounts also post the Read aloud videos prepared by Room to Read.

All these efforts are made possible by the organisation’s passionate, dedicated team across the country who understand the value of quality education and how it can transform lives in the communities they work. “We applaud Room to Read for seeking employees’ feedback and the opportunity to certify itself,” said Great Place to Work in Sri Lanka CEO Kshanika Ratnayake. “These ratings measure its capacity to earn its own employees’ trust and create a great workplace – critical metrics that anyone considering working for or doing business with Room to Read should take into account as an indicator of high performance.”