Read Nepal! Why the Books.

Our goal for the Read Nepal! campaign is to provide 1000 books for the Namaste Organization encompassing the orphanage, women's center, scholarship children and staff.

Initially the books will be focused toward the beginner readers. Many of the children don’t start learning to read until 10 or 12 years old as they have not had an opportunity to go to school. Some of the teenage children expressed specific career interests in teaching, banking and medical fields. We would like to support them by sending text books specific to those interests.

The average per capita income for Nepal is US$260. This makes Nepal the poorest country in Asia and the 12th poorest in the world. This extreme poverty leads to hunger, illiteracy, child labour, lack of health care, sanitation and clean water.

According to UNICEF the current adult literacy rate in Nepal is 49%, (some statistics show it as even lower) the lowest in Asia, with less than half of that number being women. Literacy is viewed as “A person who is able to read and write short and simple sentences related to daily life in his/her mother tongue or national language with understanding and who is able to communicate with others and perform simple tasks of calculation.”

Overall, people who tend to remain poor are households of agricultural wage earners, those who are landless, those with illiterate household heads, and those living in large households (7+ members)

In our area of the world reading can be taken for granted. It is important to recognize Nepal as a developing nation who needs our help in achieving their literacy goal of 90% by 2015. Literacy is a major step to ensure the future success of this generation of children. Through our good fortune we will give them the opportunity to improve their lives and the lives of their children.