John Wood Makes Room to Read
Former Microsoft executive ditched his job to build libraries, fight illiteracy in the Third World
By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2004
It was on a Himalayan mountaintop in the mid-1990s that millionaire Microsoft executive John Wood discovered his true calling. While trekking through Nepal's Annapurna Circuit, he met a local teacher, who invited him to tour a village school. Wood was aghast at the lack of resources, particularly in the school library. "Where are the books?" he asked.
With that, Wood chucked a seven-figure job as business development director for Microsoft in China to launch a nonprofit organization dedicated to building schools and libraries in some of the world's poorest communities. To date, the San Francisco-based charity Room to Read (R2R) has opened more than 100 schools and 1,000 school libraries in impoverished villages across Asia, enriching the lives of more than 300,000 underprivileged children.
Earlier this year, the 40-year-old Wood presided at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at R2R's 1,000th bilingual school library, set amongst the ancient temples of Cambodia's Angkor Wat. It's quite an accomplishment for a four-year-old organization, but Wood has even bigger plans—to build a total of 25,000 schools and libraries in Cambodia, India, Nepal, and Vietnam. "Access to books, to basic education goes way beyond the individual benefit—it's the foundation for economically, politically stable countries," he says. "Those of us who have the resources to facilitate change simply can't afford to overlook this root problem anymore. We're staying completely focused on the next 1,000 [libraries], then the next, then the next."
It's a long way from that first village school in the Annapurnas, where the library consisted of a bare room, filled with only 20 books—mostly mass market romances left behind by hikers—for more than 400 students. Spurred into action, Wood implored friends via e-mail to donate children's books. After netting 3,000 titles, he packed the books onto donkeys in Kathmandu and walked them back up the mountain.
Wood quit Microsoft in 1998 to pursue his literacy efforts full-time, and two years later founded R2R. The organization was honored with Fast Company magazine's 2004 "Top 20" Social Capitalist Award, which honors "organizations that use entrepreneurial genius to solve some of the world's most daunting social problems." For more information about the charity, visit www.roomtoread.org.
