By Paul Mensah Amanor, Founder of Libraries Without Walls

Libraries Without Walls is an educational program founded in 2017, now with over 50 volunteers who deliver innovative programs in mobile literacy, digital learning, creative expression, and STEM to impact the literacy of over 3,000 children annually in Ghana.The program also supplies books to community school libraries and provides capacity-building programs for early years literacy teachers in underrepresented communities.

It started with a question: How do you get kids to read in communities with many trees but no libraries? You put the books in them! With this idea, I worked with friends, teachers, and community leaders to suspend baskets from trees and place children’s books inside them. The kids, naturally curious, would come and inspect the baskets and subsequently spend time reading the books they had discovered.

I was moved to do this after meeting Precious. Precious was 9 or 10 when our paths crossed. I was teaching at a nonprofit school during my gap year. I was shocked to learn that Precious could neither read nor write—a reality that would forever alter my worldview. Together with my friends, we put together an after-school program to teach her foundational literacy. After six months, she could not only read and write but was also interacting more confidently in class! She learned how to combine two letters to form words, and words became sentences, and sentences became her story—the story of Libraries Without Walls.

A simple program that challenges the conventional idea that learning must always happen within four walls. Not all classrooms have four walls. Precious’ progress convinced me that we needed to offer this to more children facing challenges with reading and writing.

My team and I continue to boost literacy for thousands of Ghanaian children annually and provide invaluable tools for teachers in underrepresented communities. The goal? To inspire their communities by raising one million readers in the long term.

This year, we are working to launch an edtech initiative that will give more students access to digital learning opportunities. In the long term, we hope to build 100 libraries of the future in underserved communities. These libraries will use green technology and come complete with digital resources for children and youth.

Libraries Without Walls has now evolved into the literacy, STEM, creativity, and digital learning program of the Foundation for Educational Equity & Development (FEED), the nonprofit I run. Other programs run by FEED include Aspire, a rural girls’ and youth empowerment program, and Green Vanguard, a sustainable agriculture and climate action social innovation for schools and smallholder farmers in underserved communities.