The Asia Foundation, Let's Read

Let’s Read builds a world where curious and educated readers create thriving societies. We bring together the talent of local partners and the power of technology to create and translate relatable children’s books while nurturing reading habits that enable children to reach important developmental milestones, families to share stories that affirm their culture, and communities to benefit from the contributions of all of their members.

The director works with the Let’s Read team’s subject matter specialists, regional program managers, and The Asia Foundation’s country representatives to set the direction and objectives for the program as a whole and within each country context. The director role is one that requires listening and supporting conversations amongst team members and various stakeholders of the Let’s Read program. The director also works with The Asia Foundation’s senior leadership team to ensure alignment of the Let’s Read program with the goals of the Foundation. While the director is well versed in the activities of the Let’s Read program, including ongoing book creation, translation, community and school trainings, community projects, and outreach efforts, the implementation of these activities are the responsibilities of the team’s specialists and program managers.

Our Let’s Read team and leadership is committed to supporting evidence-based approaches. We’re excited by the opportunity to directly contribute to this growing body of knowledge around education, especially within the context of Asia and the Pacific.

Our team is well-positioned to support the LEAP Project as we’re undergoing a transition within the team, moving towards stronger specialization in core Let’s Read areas, including content creation, educational design, and technology.

This spring, we’ve added a new position to the Let’s Read team, Education Design Specialist, and are excited to have Wendy Xiao be in that role. Ms. Xiao brings expertise and experience to the team regarding how we can effectively design content, programs, and our technology to better support readers. Ms. Xiao is also leading our technology development team, so we will have direct buy-in to affect any changes needed in regards to data collection through the platform.

Our Let’s Read country staff maintain strong connections to local communities who utilize the Let’s Read platform and government officials who affect the enabling environment around education and reading. Since our country staff directly talk with stakeholders within their countries, they fully understand the need to be able to show evidence-based approaches to secure buy-in for Let’s Read projects. With direct connections to communities, schools, and officials, Let’s Read country staff are well positioned to effect change and take advantage of opportunities immediately.

Let’s Read catalyzes children’s literacy through the confluence of intuitive, accessible technology, community-led engagement, and fun, local language stories. 

Let’s Read addresses the problem of how to develop literacy skills among children who live in under resourced communities throughout Asia and the Pacific, particularly those who are non-majority language speakers. Let’s Read’s solution enables parents and communities to be part of their children’s learning experiences, regardless of their own education levels, and supports the government’s Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy.

With inconsistent learning taking place throughout Asia and the Pacific due to COVID-19 pandemic school closures, kids are struggling to gain basic early reading and numeracy skills that will support the rest of their educational paths. The World Banks estimated prior to the pandemic, 6 out of 10 ten-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were unable to read and understand a simple story (World Bank, 2022). Without additional interventions within the formal education system and strong additional support at home, this lack of basic reading skills will affect millions of children and have long term effects on society.

Science shows that children who develop foundational literacy skills in their mother tongue are better able to develop literacy in the language(s) of instruction by linking new knowledge to existing knowledge. Therefore, many education systems around the world are adopting MTB-MLE policies that support the development of foundational literacy skills in mother tongues along with national languages. Yet, countries across Asia and the Pacific often struggle to implement MTB-MLE policies effectively. Key challenges include a lack of culturally embedded home reading practices, scarcity of local language books, and insufficient internet connectivity and digital skills in non-majority language communities.

Reading is a fundamental skill that empowers each of us to participate in society.

Let’s Read creates local children’s storybooks in Asia and the Pacific, so kids can see themselves in the stories they read and form strong connections to their own worlds. We support access to digital and print books so children in all communities have the opportunity to enjoy and grow with books. And we support reading opportunities so kids and their families gain valuable early reading skills and habits.

Let’s Read works with local authors and illustrators to create high-quality storybooks on various topics and at different reading levels. This book creation allows the Let’s Read library to be full of engaging storybooks at all primary reading levels, from pre-readers to advanced readers. It also allows kids to find books on topics engaging their interests.

The Let’s Read library is a free digital library (web, Android, and iOS) with over 10,000 openly licensed storybooks in 57 languages. Since not all kids live in a digitally accessible environment, all the books are also available to download and print. And, since not all kids live in fully literate homes, the Let’s Read library also has a growing collection of books with audio that provides audio-text highlighting.

Let’s Read is also introducing our Learning Pathways feature within the digital library, a curated scope and sequence of books and activities designed to help kids achieve specific learning objectives. The feature allows kids to work through the pathway at their own pace. The books and activities are curated based on established best practices for acquiring early literacy skills within the given language.

Let’s Read also works with community groups, schools, and governments to support families with the knowledge and confidence to bring the habit of reading into their homes. This is done through informational campaigns, partnerships, and in-person community reading sessions.

Let’s Read has prioritized gaining evidence of the effectiveness of the program in the last few years. This has taken a couple of different forms.

Foundational Research – Much of the historic evidence and research around the correlation between strong reading skills and educational outcomes has had a Western focus. In late 2022, Let’s Read worked on a literature review of existing research around early reading with a focus on Cambodia. This report is currently being finalized and will be published in the coming months.

Formative Research – In 2021-2022, Let’s Read conduct three separate behavior studies in Mongolia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. The goal of these studies was to gain insight into the challenges that the programs primary audiences face around reading and the opportunities to improve the program’s content, technology, and outreach. The research in Mongolia was the first of two surveys, with the second survey set to be conducted at the end of a three-year programming cycle in 2024. The goal of this research is to see if there is a change in attitudes and behaviors of the program’s audience.

Let’s Read has also recently concluded two projects, in Cambodia and Nepal, that included in-person, community sessions involving more intensive early childhood education teaching interventions. Both projects included pre- and post- assessments of the participating children, along with user interviews of participating parents, facilitators, and children’s next teachers (conducted with grade one teachers, four months after the project’s end). These assessments looked at early reading and numeracy skills, as well as attitudes and behaviors around reading.

The behavior studies in Mongolia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh have provided a wealth of information and insights into the attitudes and beliefs of Let’s Read’s primary audiences within those cultural contexts. The work has created a spotlight for the many challenges and opportunities for the program. This information has been invaluable in starting to shape how we talk about Let’s Read, areas of outreach that we need to focus on, and opportunities to provide an easier path for families to read at home. However, the studies did not provide any information about how effectively our solution addresses these challenges.

The two project assessments conducted in Cambodia and Nepal provided evidence for the in-person interventions conducted through both projects. This information has helped shape additional in-person, community-based interventions. However, a challenge faced by both assessments was that there was neither had a strong control group to compare the results. In Nepal, a control group was utilized. However, the control and intervention groups both also received additional educational interventions outside of the Let’s Read project. In Cambodia, no control group was available.

While these studies and research have been helpful, for our LEAP application, we’re primarily interested in how effective non-in-person and non-intensive interventions are in supporting the acquisition of early reading skills and positive attitudes toward reading. Unfortunately, we don’t have a body of evidence for this question.

Let’s Read has enjoyed a significant amount of growth over the past number of years and we’re now entering a new phase of the program. While we’ve always created high-quality storybooks, we’re now receiving more interest from Ministries of Education to align the Let’s Read program more closely with schools and national educational standards. We see this as an incredible opportunity and conduit to connecting with families and having a larger impact on children’s early reading skills and habits.

While we’ve been able to show resource intensive interventions, such as our in-person, community reading sessions, have demonstrable benefits, we’ve always relied on “common knowledge” that reading is good and effective in increasing educational outcomes. We’ve taken steps to better understand the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of our primary audience, parents and families, but we need strong evidence to demonstrate what so many of us take for granted, that reading leads to increased educational outcomes.

Our goal in participating in the LEAP Project sprint is to show that consistent reading at home will have an impact on children’s reading skills and/or have an impact on perceptions around reading, which lead to increased enjoyment and amounts of reading taking place. To accomplish this, we’re looking for support on whether we need to answer more immediate questions, such as the importance of having books that reflect children’s lives and the effectiveness of exposure to books without any further interventions.

Our team is eager to take these next, important steps that will help us be more effective in our role of supporting children’s early reading skills.

Our long-term goal is to demonstrate that small amounts of consistent reading at home (30-40 minutes a week) will lead to stronger early reading skills and stronger educational outcomes.

1. What factors are effective in helping establish early reading habits in Asia and the Pacific?

2. Does exposure to digital books and consistent reading at home, without any further interventions from trained facilitators, lead to increased early reading skills?

3. Does having books that are reflective of children’s lives (characters that look like them, settings they’re familiar with, etc.) lead to increased reading and more enjoyment of the books?

Our desired outputs from the LEAP Project would be a practical and detailed research plan that can utilize both the analytics that we collect from Let’s Read library usage and our country staff’s relationships with communities. I’d like for our Let’s Read team to work with the LEAP Fellows to identify an ideal country program and location to conduct the research within. Ideally, we would have a collaborative process between the LEAP Fellows and the Let’s Read team that aims to answer the above questions but is realistic about the resources and circumstances needed for those questions, given the context of the program, the community, and other factors.

Other outputs from the sprint would be recommendations on additional or different data points that we might be able to collect from the Let’s Read library usage or ask through focus groups and community discussions.

Within the 12-weeks, I would also like to be able to further refine, if needed, the research questions that we’ve stated above. I’d like formulate a practice approach the research plan and identify any other expertise or local resources that might be needed. Ideally, we would be able to formulate questions and test the research plan. This could include identifying data to be collected, along with initial collection to understand if we start to see the results the team would expect to see.

As a secondary benefit, I’d like to see the 12-week print bring best-practices around evidence gathering to the Let’s Read team. Even if we’re not always conducting research and gathering evidence, I believe it’s extremely valuable to approach projects from an evidence-based point of view.

Ideally, the result of the 12-week sprint will be a detailed research plan that has already been stress tested. That process would include identifying a location and context in which to conduct the research. Therefore, Let’s Read would have all the factors in place to implement the research plan.

This is an optimistic and ideal view of the outputs. If the result of the LEAP Project sprint provides recommendations and a plan that is not immediately executable, Let’s Read will prioritize a search for the necessary resources and tools to execute the plan . Let’s Read and The Asia Foundation has strong relationships with various foundations, public sector organizations, and individuals that are keenly interested in supporting evidence-based solutions.

Further into the future, assuming the research plan can be executed, Let’s Read will utilize the results to make adjustments to our programs, propose activities based on the results, and add the learnings from the research to the public knowledge around reading. The Asia Foundation is a strong advocate for publicly shared information and produces research-based reports on a variety of topics each year. 

The long-term outcome from participation in the LEAP Project sprint is for the Let’s Read program be more grounded in evidence-based approaches. This includes project design, outreach efforts, and funding opportunities. We have a strong belief that when we can create evidence-based programs and effectively communicate the work we’re engaged in with communities, kids of all abilities and varying interests will gain the early reading skills and enjoyment necessary to achieve successful educational outcomes. 

In the short-term, ideally, the outputs of the LEAP Project sprint will directly lead to a research project that lasts well beyond the sprint. The results from this research project will inform Let’s Read’s approach within the context of that country and community. The results will also inform the approach of Let’s Read in other countries and contexts.  

Assuming a successful sprint and research project, Let’s Read will look for additional opportunities to conduct research and collect evidence of our approaches in other contexts. This research will add to increasing body of knowledge that supports best-practices and evidence-based approaches to reading in Asia and the Pacific. This includes Let’s Read staff’s own knowledge around research best-practices and passing of that knowledge on to our local partners and communities.