Yesterday marked the 18th World Book and Copyright Day, first introduced by UNESCO in 1995, in celebration of books, authors, and the joys of reading. It’s also an occasion to reflect on the importance of education, especially as a driver of poverty reduction. The link between education and economic empowerment is undeniable; accordingly, governments, civil society, and the international donor community have made notable efforts to increase school enrollment and improve literacy rates around the world.

While literacy rates have improved vastly over the past decade in Cambodia, improvements in functional literacy are more uncertain. Photo/Karl Grobl

Despite advancements, an estimated 250 million children are still unable to read and write, and in some developing countries, 25-50 percent of students who have graduated from primary school cannot read a single sentence, according to the World Bank.

Unfortunately, Cambodia is no exception. While literacy rates have improved vastly over the past decade – according to the 2008 National Population Census, currently at about 78 percent among those aged 15 years or older – improvements in functional literacy (the ability to read, write, and calculate beyond basic skills) are more uncertain. In 1999, functional literacy was just 37 percent, in comparison to the basic literacy rate of 68 percent. Unsurprisingly, a third of Cambodians live below the national poverty line, which is 61 cents. Moreover, Cambodia’s improvement in literacy has not necessarily been equitable, with girls, the rural poor, and minorities still facing the most significant challenges.

The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has been committed to expanding educational opportunities and is party to several international initiatives, including the Millennium Development Goals and UNESCO’s Education for All. Nationally, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MoEYS), as part of its Education Strategic Plan 2009-2013, has prioritized expanding early childhood education, non-formal education, technical and vocational training, and access to secondary and post-secondary education. To address disparities in literacy rates, MoEYS has designed and implemented inclusive policies such as bilingual education in provinces like Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri with a large minority population, scholarships for girls and students representing other vulnerable groups, and non-formal education opportunities for youth and adults that are not integrated into the public school system.

While these initiatives have had positive impact, Cambodia’s education system still faces numerous hurdles, including issues related to governance and quality of services at subnational levels. Cambodia also faces growing demand for a labor force fluent in English. In 2008, only 5 percent of the population had working knowledge of the English language. Inadequate resources, such as textbooks and facilities, contribute to the problem. With the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, which will establish a free trade zone among ASEAN member countries, English-language proficiency will be even more critical for Cambodia’s growth and development.

The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program, in partnership with the RGC and a network of NGOs, has distributed over 900,000 books and other educational materials to Cambodian universities, primary and secondary schools, NGOs, government ministries, and public libraries. Read more about Books for Asia in Cambodia.

Cham Soeun is a program officer for the Books for Asia program and Lisa H. Kim is program officer for The Asia Foundation in Cambodia. They can be reached at scham@asiafound.org and lkim@asiafound.org, respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors and not those of The Asia Foundation.

The Asia Foundation’s Wendy Rockett (left) and other Beyond Access team members meet with Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Burma MP Aung San Suu Kyi.

“We want Myanmar to be a knowledge-based society, a learning society. One that is very open, one where everyone is treated with respect.”

With these words, Dr. Aung Tun Thet, senior adviser at the United Nations Resident Coordinator’s Office in Myanmar, kicked off Beyond Access’ salon in Yangon with this vision for the country’s future. Although Myanmar has a high literacy rate and the number of news outlets has exploded since the dismantlement of state censorship, school drop-out rates are high and access to information remains a challenge, particularly in rural areas. Electricity is often unreliable, even in Yangon, and only 1 percent of the country has internet. In order to identify new ways forward, a wide coalition of people ranging from librarians and community groups to international NGOs and aid agencies to technology, publishing, and education professionals gathered at the National Museum on Tuesday to discuss Myanmar’s pressing information needs.

Local organizations highlighted the difficulties faced by rural communities and suggested ways in which libraries could be revitalized to play a central role in educating and informing remote communities. Daw Cho Cho Aung, a representative from the Bayda Institute, pointed out there is a lack of books in the Myanmar language. “English books are very precious. But those who live in rural areas cannot read them, which is why Myanmar books are needed.” U Htoo Chit, director of Thabyay Education Foundation, added, “We need not only books, but we need to also raise awareness about the importance of reading.”

The library at Sint Gu, a remote village outside of Mandalay. As is typical in rural Burma, a community leader funded the construction of the library and a volunteer acts as the librarian. Photo/Wendy Rockett

May Moe New, managing director of the Myanmar Book Center, emphasized that libraries need to address the specific needs of the communities they serve: “If it’s a normal public library, people are not so interested to come. What we can do is provide everyday, up-to-date info in Myanmar language to these community centers in rural libraries at grassroots level.”

Technology was a hot topic of conversation. Martin of Kant Kaw Education Center suggested that equipping rural libraries with computers and internet access be prioritized. He pointed out that villagers often have “little or no current information on what’s happening inside Myanmar.”

Ed Anderson, The Asia Foundation’s program manager in Myanmar, suggested: “Instead of focusing library by library, book by book, we should look at the bigger picture.” He urged the group to “think beyond the building” and examine how libraries use technology to provide enhanced services. iG Publishing’s Dr. Aung Maw agreed: “We need to think about ways and means for access. Libraries are one of them. Radios and call centers are another means of accessing information.” He also suggested collating information central to people’s lives, such as news on agriculture, business, and health, from Myanmar’s numerous news journals and distributing them to remote communities via DVD. Journals are one of the main sources of information in the country. Other topics discussed included the importance of open government initiatives and public-private partnerships.

Monika Elbert of EIFL neatly summed up the main challenges facing library development in Myanmar, identified as the 5 c’s: connectivity, computers, content, competence of librarians, and community needs.

Editor’s note: This version has been edited slightly from the original.

The Asia Foundation’s Asian American Exchange unit and Books for Asia are currently conducting a 10-day observation program around northern California for 14 librarians from nine Asian countries. While in San Francisco,

It has been said that despite five decades of near-isolation, the culture and appetite for education and reading is still very much alive for the people of Myanmar. Can you talk a bit about this culture, and how this has changed throughout the years?

Mr. Ye Htet Oo:  The reading culture was established many years ago in Myanmar. Before we had formal schools, we had monastery school education, which is all about reading and also teaching religion. This is still very much alive in our society. In addition, due to a long period of isolation, we haven’t had many other forms of entertainment and even then, it’s too expensive for the majority of people. Most people still read books or other publications in their leisure time as they aren’t able to spend much on internet or computers, and some places don’t even have electricity yet. People in Myanmar read to give their minds an outlet. This has helped to preserve our reading culture.

Ms. Mya Oo: As Ye Htet said, our reading culture has been strong even since the Pagan Dynasty where we have a record of literary works. At the time, there were many scholars in the literary field, and even women were able to be literary scholars. That literary culture has extended for decades until now.

Myanmar’s literacy rate remains high at 90 percent – much higher than many other countries in the region. How has this been maintained, despite its isolation?

Ye Htet Oo: Even though they might not be able to access a formal education, most of the people in Myanmar have learned to read in other ways, either through monastery schools or maybe they went to a church and learned to read from the nuns. That’s why the literacy rate is pretty high even in the rural areas. Even if you can’t go to the schools, there is somewhere for you to go to learn to read. However, there is a need here for more schools. In some larger areas like Yangon and Mandalay, there are sometimes 70 students per classroom. That’s how it was when I went to high school, and that’s too many for one teacher.

Mya Oo: People have long let their children go to the monastery, even in the villages, where children can learn to read and write. Some due to poverty cannot read to the highest standard, but they can still read and write.

In just a year, the Myanmar government has relaxed censorship, and lifted bans on internet access and social media websites. Can you describe what the atmosphere was like before and how this will play a role in people’s access to information and the future of libraries in the country?

Ye Htet Oo: Censorship has its advantages and disadvantages as all things do. One good thing about censorship is that it protects the reader from hateful or false comments. But then, the bad part about that is that the reader isn’t exposed to the other side of the debate. If you see white, you have to believe white, that’s it. Now that censorship has been relaxed, you don’t need to rely on outside media to know about the different sides. We have much more freedom to speak and write now. But it’s also important that people know whether something is biased or not when they read it, and the media need more practice at offering both sides so that coverage isn’t this way. Right now, NLD party leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein are both in the U.S. However, you aren’t finding news of Thein Sein’s visit in the local papers in Myanmar. This is what happens when you don’t have any censorship at all, and you have to decide what is good and what is bad.

Mya Oo: We should respect each other’s privacy, and the media must have strong ethics. With this shift, we now need to find what level of freedoms and what levels of censorship we need in order to maintain our ethics.

Ye Htet Oo: One benefit of this change is that it has recently become much easier to open a library than it once was. I opened my library in 2009, and I went through a lot to get permission to open the library, and it shouldn’t be that way. Right now, you don’t really need a license, you go to the Ministry of Information and they will help you. People now have greater access to information, and that’s a very good shift. But we still need to encourage people to read more books both in English and in Myanmar language that aren’t just about entertainment and celebrities. Now that the country has started to open its door, a lot of pop culture entertainment content has come in.

Among other Southeast Asian countries, our internet connectivity is low, but still, people use it a lot – you would not believe it. There’s a huge demand for it. However, as a librarian, it could be a scary influence. When you have other forms of entertainment like TV and internet, books will be the last thing young people will want to choose. As a result, our libraries also need to adapt. You can’t wait for people to come and read in your library; you need outreach programs that convince people that libraries are like home again. Of course we need the internet, but we must also find ways to balance it.

What has been the role of libraries in society over the last decades?  What have been the biggest challenges that you’ve faced?

Ye Htet Oo: In past years, the use of libraries was quite high because we didn’t have a lot of other entertainment options. I operate four mobile libraries outside of Yangon, where the poverty rate is much higher than in the urban areas. In colonial times, the library was a place where you gathered around for discussion and to make things happen. But after the colonial era, it became a bigger issue for people to gather in a group. There was worry that if you came together you might talk about politics. That’s why libraries in Myanmar have struggled at times. After I opened my library, this has become less and less an issue, and people have started gathering at libraries to discuss ideas. This is going to continue to get better in the future, but for right now, we need to build more programs to encourage people to come to the library and stay, not just come to the library, take a book, and go back home.

Mya Oo: The National Library is different from other public libraries. After independence, we received most of our special collection from the Bernard Free Library which was established in 1883. Our vision is to be the center of the intellectual heritage of Myanmar. That’s why we have to preserve these special collections as part of our heritage.

We primarily serve researchers and scholars, and we currently can’t meet users’ demand. We rely on government funding, and the rules and regulations regarding the books can be strict. As a result, we have not been able to lend the books to the public to take home. If we take inventory of the collections, if we’ve lost even one book, we will have a lot of explaining to do. However, now, our superiors are starting to understand what we need to do to reach the public. We cannot just wait for people to come into the libraries; we have to go to the people and give them to the people. We are responsible for the risks of loss of the books. If we can’t be responsible for that, we cannot meet our vision. We’ve recently started to lend the books twice a month to a teacher training college nearby, which can’t afford to buy publications, and people can use them there as well.

What role can the international community play to strengthen libraries, education, and access to information in your country?  

Mya Oo: In the past, many of our country’s trained librarians and professors got masters degrees from the West, especially the U.S. This really helped them to gain techniques to teach students successfully. But, later, as a result of sanctions on Myanmar, no one could go to the U.S. and other western countries for scholarship. The U.S. is the best place to learn librarianship. If these countries would allow more scholarship programs, this would help the development of our own librarianship.

Ye Htet Oo: For the community libraries in Myanmar, funding is a big issue. In other countries you might fundraise openly, but in Myanmar, that would still be a problem. We need more funding to come up with innovative ways to make people come back to the library. Libraries and books are welcome and we need more, but we also need support to build library outreach programs – that would be very helpful.

What has been the most memorable and valuable experience from the study tour that you have gained so far?

Ye Htet Oo: This has been a great opportunity for me to come to the United States and explore how libraries work in a developed country. Pop entertainment is now dominating our time, and it is very hard for a library to survive as it did in the old days. So, we need to make and run programs which will help ensure that libraries provide people with relevant information. While here, we’ve visited libraries that offer online job searches and college counseling, which have been some of the most exciting things to see, as it encourages more people to come and participate in the library programs. I also meet volunteers who are in their 50s or 60s, which is interesting, because in my country most of the volunteers are between 16 and 18. I realized that I need to recruit seniors and retirees as well in my library. Getting to know all of the other participants from across Asia has been the most thrilling experience. Many of us come from similar backgrounds and have nearly the same issues, so it’s good to share and learn from each other’s experiences.

This International Literacy Day, Sept. 8, 2012, marks the culmination of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UILD), an initiative launched in 2003 to increase literacy levels and develop literate environments worldwide. Much has improved over the last 10 years, including literacy solutions and tools that integrate rapid innovations at the intersection of education and technology – many of which were not available at the onset of UILD. These new methods of learning can support nations grappling with illiteracy by providing lower-cost solutions to today’s ever-increasing access needs for information and technology.

Although few long-term studies exist, early research suggests that access to mobile technology, more specifically mobile phones and tablets, can improve literacy performance among learners if effectively monitored, updated, and integrated with other literacy tools. A recent pilot study evaluation in Ghana conducted by USAID and Worldreader found positive effects that include increased enthusiasm toward reading, greater access to resources for teachers, and improved technological skills and performance on standardized scores at the primary level. In the U.S., teachers in Chicago, Illinois, and Auburn, Maine, conducted classroom research that showed notable gains in literacy after introducing Apple’s iPad into their lessons. These preliminary indicators linking literacy improvement to mobile learning through tablets hold promise for many countries in developing Asia, particularly as mobile phone and internet penetration increases exponentially. There are already 123 million internet users across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In Thailand alone, the internet penetration rate is nearly 60 percent, with nearly 72 million mobile phone subscriptions for the country’s 69 million citizens.

As Thailand prepares for increased regional integration under the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, the Ministry of Education has major challenges preparing students to compete with thriving neighbors like Singapore and Malaysia. While the World Bank upgraded Thailand’s income categorization to an upper-middle income economy in 2011, some experts, including senior economist Kirida Bhaopichitr, warned that higher levels of education and innovation are essential to continuing inclusive growth.

In early 2012, one bold move to address the challenge of equitable distribution among middle-income economies is Thailand’s One Tablet per Child Initiative (OTPC), which declares that every child in Thailand will have access to tablets to enhance learning and literacy. To date, the project has already delivered nearly 55,000 tablets to first-grade students out of an anticipated 900,000. Each tablet will provide access to as many as 336 learning applications for five subjects including ESL, math, Thai, social studies, and science. The Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC) plans to train 549 supervisors to help train over 50,000 first-grade teachers to instruct their students in appropriate and effective use of the tablets. An additional 730,000 tablets are slated for delivery to schools in various urban and rural provinces: Chon Buri, Chainat, Chaiyaphum, Chumphon, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Trang,Tak, Nakhon Nayok, Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Phanom, and Nakhon Ratchasima.

Thailand’s OTPC initiative seeks to provide access to mobile tablets, effective teaching and e-learning materials, teacher training and professional development of mobile tablet technology, and improved high-speed internet access nationwide. However comprehensive these goals may be, the initiative has faced stiff criticism from local and international experts for delayed deployment of the tablets, inadequate teacher training, insufficient planning for device maintenance, and most importantly, lack of robust content. Many of these challenges were lessons learned already through the One Laptop per Child initiative which many viewed as a flawed attempt at transforming education. Nonetheless, the government’s overarching vision to bring educational technology into the classroom to bridge the digital divide and facilitate the next era of education and innovation is courageous. If the challenges can be addressed with intelligent design and execution, Thailand’s new mobile learning initiative holds potential to influence education systems worldwide.

Meanwhile, non-governmental organizations are stepping in to fill in the teacher training and content gap by working at the grassroots level, and attempting to identify scalable models that work. As part of our Access4Asia initiative, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program is supporting the OTPC initiative in Thailand with a training program for Android tablets at an early adopter school. In order to better prepare their teachers for the transition, Anuban Wat Ang Thong School, just outside of Bangkok, has purchased 45 tablets ahead of the government-mandated distribution. The Asia Foundation, its partner Books for Thailand, and the British Council are collaborating to conduct training sessions for teachers on tablet operation and how to effectively incorporate the devices into the curriculum. In addition, we’re also working with Change Fusion to fulfill the content gap by developing locally appropriate apps dealing with English as a Second Language (ESL) and climate change. This first round of app development reflects Thai priorities to increase job opportunities under a unified ASEAN economy by 2015 and raise awareness about climate change issues, the effects of which were experienced in 2011 at Anuban Wat Ang Thong School during the country’s worst flood season in five decades.

Although Thailand’s OTPC initiative is still in its early incubation phase and more analysis is needed on its effectiveness, it does take an important step toward addressing education challenges and preparing Thai citizens for a more technology-driven future where they will be better able to compete within ASEAN and beyond.

*Editor’s note: This version has been edited slightly from the original.

Naita Saechao is operations manager for The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program. She can be reached at nsaechao@asiafound.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.

I recently took a trip into the heart of Malaysian Borneo to visit some of the most remote schools that The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia serves. Borneo is a large island located north of Java, Indonesia. In the spring of 2011, we started a partnership with PACOS Trust, a local organization that works with indigenous communities, to reach schools deep in Sabah’s rainforests, mountains, and coastal plains. Although Malaysia is a middle-income country with the third largest economy in Southeast Asia, a large disparity exists between peninsular Malaysia and the country’s eastern provinces, like Sabah. Sabah is the country’s poorest state with 20 percent of its people living on less than $1 compared to a poverty rate of 4 percent for the rest of the country. Sabah’s literacy rate is 79 percent while the country’s overall rate is 91 percent.

The journey from Kota Kinabalu, the coastal capital of the state of Sabah, to Kampong Minusoh took all day, and the last 43 kilometers were over a muddy, bumpy dirt road. At some point, the power lines ended and palm oil plantations stretched out on both sides of the road. Massive spools of electrical wire dotted the road every few kilometers. I later found out that these spools had been sitting by the side of the road for years despite repeated promises to bring electricity to the adjacent villages.

The journey from Kota Kinabalu, the coastal capital of the state of Sabah, to Kampong Minusoh. Photo by Amir Shariff.

When we finally reached Kampong Minusoh, I noticed satellite dishes attached to a fair number of the homes. The village has no electricity but those who can afford them run generators at night to light their homes and power TVs and computers.

Frustration over the lack of infrastructure was a constant refrain during discussions I had with the villagers. Many told me that while they are eager to keep their communities and traditional way of life intact, they still want and need basic modern amenities like electricity.

“I’d like to see this village prosper,” Wilsten Lawrence, the village chief and our host, told me. “If the level of education in his village improves, the people would be better able to negotiate with the government for the infrastructure and jobs that are desperately needed,” he said. In addition to lobbying for infrastructure, indigenous Sabahans have been fighting for rights over their ancestral land, which puts them in conflict with agricultural companies that have set up vast palm oil plantations in the area.

Wilsten Lawrence (left) with community members at Kampong Minusoh, a village of approximately 800 people. “I’d like to see this village prosper,” he said. Photo by Amir Shariff.

Only two students from the village have gone to university; most become subsistence farmers after graduating high school. Lawrence estimates that in Kampong Minusoh, the literacy rate in Bahasa Melayu, the national language, is 90 percent while in English it is just 10 percent. He added that acquiring better English-language skills is critical for working to improve their village. “English is an international language so to have a profession like a doctor or lawyer you need to know English.”

Education in villages like Minusoh is confined and limited by the poor infrastructure. Students whose families cannot afford a generator are not able to study at night. Due to their isolation, rural Sabahans do not have access to many books. The budgets of school libraries – often the only source of books in the villages – are very small and their selection is limited to a book list provided by the government.

Due to their isolation, students in rural Sabah do not have as much access to books as other parts of Malaysia. Photo by Amir Shariff.

Anne Lasimbang, executive director of PACOS Trust, cites this as one of the reasons her organization partnered with The Asia Foundation to distribute books to the most remote sections of Sabah. “Our children need to be exposed to books,” she told me; beautifully illustrated books, in particular. She said she has witnessed children’s curiosity come alive when reading a picture book with a teacher. Even if the child can’t read the words, it prompts him or her to ask, “What is this?” she said.

Last year, Books for Asia sent about 13,000 books donated by Pearson Education to isolated schools in Sabah. Cut off from the rest of their country and hamstrung by the lack of educational resources, these communities are the very ones Books for Asia strives to reach.

Read more about Books for Asia.

Wendy Rockett is Books for Asia’s communications and outreach program officer and Amir Amir Shariff is a senior program officer in Malaysia. They can be reached at wrockett@asiafound.org and amir@asiafound.org, respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.

It’s good to have heroes. One of mine is Sakena Yacoobi, the founder of a terrific organization called the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) that provides education and health services to women across Afghanistan. I first met Sakena nearly a decade ago, and have followed her work closely since then. I’ve visited several of AIL’s programs in Afghanistan and wrote about her and her work in my book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.

Sakena Yacoobi (left) speaks at The Asia Foundation's second annual Lotus Leadership Awards with CFR's Isobel Coleman (center) and the Foundation's Carol Yost. Photo by Whitney Legge.

Sakena was in New York last week to receive The Asia Foundation’s second annual Lotus Leadership Award; en route to New York, she also received an honorary award from the World’s Children’s Prize Foundation, a nonprofit in Sweden. Not surprisingly, she’s received tons of awards over the years for her work in Afghanistan with marginalized Afghan women.

Taught to read as a child by her local mullah in western Afghanistan, Sakena remarkably (read my book for all the details) went on to earn a master’s degree in public health in the United States. In the 1990s, she started the Afghan Institute of Learning, mostly serving Afghan refugees in Pakistan, but also secretly operating girls’ schools in Kabul during the Taliban years. After the Taliban were toppled in 2001, AIL quickly expanded its programs, establishing multiple women’s centers across the country. Its reach today is impressive: since 1996, AIL-trained teachers have taught 4.6 million people, and more than a million Afghan women and their children have received its health services. In 2011 alone, the organization treated over 185,000 people (70 percent of them women). Over nine million Afghans – a third of the population – have been touched by AIL programs. Sakena manages all of this on a shoe-string budget of less than $2 million a year, using local resources and local salaries.

AIL’s work deserves at least a bit of the credit for Afghanistan’s significantly improved health and educational outcomes in recent years, particularly for women. Under the Taliban, virtually no girls were enrolled in school (except for underground schools like the ones that Sakena ran), but today about 2.7 million girls attend school. There are now also strong levels of popular support for women’s education in Afghanistan. According to The Asia Foundation’s 2011 Survey of the Afghan People, 85 percent of Afghans agreed with the statement that “Women should have equal opportunities like men in education.” Nearly two-thirds of Afghans believe that women should be allowed to work outside of their homes. Maternal mortality has declined, albeit from medieval levels, and infant and child mortality have also come down significantly. Sakena sees the improvements in her clinics: “A decade ago, women and children came in covered in skin diseases and suffering from severe malnutrition, but today they generally look much better,” she told me this week. AIL emphasizes health education and awareness of important life skills with the women it sees.

Understandably, Sakena is worried about what the future holds as the international community reduces its presence in Afghanistan. She insists that if the Taliban attempts to take over the country and reverse the progress that women have made, Afghan women will “flood into the streets in protest.” She also dismisses talk that a “gentler” Taliban might emerge with a less harsh approach towards women. Last year, for example, Farook Wardak, the Afghan minister of education, stated in a BBC interview that he had been hearing “at the very upper policy level of the Taliban” that they would no longer oppose girls’ education. Sakena – pointing to recent Taliban attacks on girls’ schools – questions how Afghan women can ever trust the Taliban. In addition to girls’ education, she worries about the fragile gains women have made politically. She speculates (as others have) that if peace talks between the Taliban and the national government go forward, gains like the quota reserving a quarter of the seats in parliament for women could be on the chopping block during negotiations. “[Women] want to keep the constitution. We are proud of it,” she says.

With her usual indomitable courage, Sakena says to me: “I’m not scared to be dead, but I’m scared for the [future of] my programs.” She hopes that as international troops depart Afghanistan, the international community will remain engaged with organizations like hers that are working at the grassroots level to educate the next generation and open their minds to new ways to thinking. That may be the best hope for Afghanistan in the years to come.

This article, which has been edited slightly from the original, was first published on the Council on Foreign Relations’ blog, Democracy in Development.

Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow and director of the Civil Society, Markets and Democracy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a panelist at the second annual Lotus Leadership Awards in New York City on June 7.

In Indonesia, with a culture evolving from oral traditions, reading has been slow to take hold. But advocates have been persistent, saying reading can help expand children’s imaginations and broaden their knowledge, especially in the far corners of the archipelago where access to television, the Internet and media generally tend to be limited.

Indonesian elementary students read from new textbooks. Photo: Anne Luntungan

Taman Bacaan Pelangi has established 23 small libraries in remote villages, with five new branches this year, including in East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi. The Books for Asia campaign will donate English-language children’s books to these libraries, whose shelves currently hold collections ranging from 400 to 12,000 titles.

Schools in these villages also try to teach students English during their fourth year of elementary school, and organizers hope the donated books will reinforce those efforts. “Having new books on the shelves is very exciting for the children,” said Nila Tanzil, the founder of Taman Bacaan Pelangi. “Seeing these new books already motivates them to read and learn English.

“The unique feature of the Rainbow Reading Gardens is that every six months, books from a village are swapped with books from another library from a nearby village,” she added. “So the books are always new, which keeps the kids excited.” She said Taman Bacaan Pelangi will be grateful for the Asia Foundation’s contributions. “It’s very hard to access books in remote parts of Indonesia,” she said. “Bookstores are rare, even school libraries’ collections are limited, and for that, we need all the support we can get.”

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“Just because they are poor and isolated doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be the next Bill Gates,” said Shahed Kayes, the founder of Subornogram Foundation in Bangladesh, while introducing me to lively students at a school he started on the remote island of Mayadip. Located in the Meghna River, the island’s 1,100 residents don’t have access to public services such as safe drinking water, public schools, or health care. The residents rely on the river’s catch of fish for their livelihood, and 97 percent live below the poverty line. Although the school doesn’t own a single computer and the island has no electricity, Shahed couldn’t resist taking out his personal laptop and showing the children how to use it, giving them at least a small glimpse of the world beyond their shores.

Shahed Kayes, pictured here with students, founded the Subornogram Foundation. The school doesn't own a computer and the island has no electricity.

While the school on Mayadip only recently acquired rough wooden tables to use as desks, Shahed’s philosophy captures the promise that technology holds to leap over barriers created by geography, social class, and language.

The desire to use technological innovations to improve education in both the developed and developing worlds is undeniably trendy these days. I attended a UNESCO and Consortium of School Networking conference on this topic in Washington, D.C., recently, and there are dozens of similarly themed workshops being held every month. Experiments using technology in education in the developing world are often driven by international funders, domestic companies, and non-profits who hope these innovations can surmount the many obstacles facing severely challenged education systems where rote teaching methods and undertrained, underpaid, and outnumbered teachers are the norm.

In recent years, Asian governments have made large investments in technology innovations to expand their population's technology capacity. Photo by Bart Verweij.

National governments have also made large investments in this sector with the hope that expanding their population’s technology capacity will fuel economic growth. In Thailand, the government has set aside the equivalent of $60 million to purchase 900,000 tablets through the One Tablet per Child initiative for the country’s 860,000 first graders. The governments of India and the Philippines have been behind efforts to create the world’s cheapest tablets. The National Library of Vietnam reports that while 2,000 people daily walk through the doors of the main Hanoi library, another 5,000 access their online database, compelling the government to invest in digitizing its collections.

And as mobile phone ownership becomes commonplace in the developing world and internet access increases, democratization of information does seems more possible than ever before. In 2010, although the population of Malaysia was 28 million, there were over 30 million mobile phone subscriptions. In the same year, the average Filipino cell phone user sent an average of 600 text messages per month, 43 percent more than their counterparts in the United States. In Vietnam, the internet penetration rate is 31 percent and, in the capitol, Hanoi, penetration is 64 percent. Vietnamese internet use averages about 30 million searches per day. Indeed, when I visited Vietnam last year, I was amazed to find a small rural post office in Duyen Hai overrun by more than 30 eager boys playing educational games and one young girl doing research for a school project, on computers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a project with The Asia Foundation and the National Library.

I admit that I can be skeptical about projects I come across that seem to employ technology just for technology’s sake or as a panacea rather than a tool. But these early efforts have yielded some important lessons, including the realization that device-specific projects can quickly become obsolete while long-term investments in training, support, and adaptation are necessary for projects involving technology to be effective and sustainable. With these guiding principles in mind, I am energized by the potential that technological innovations hold to create a more level playing field in education, training, and learning across the globe.

With wider application, the following three advances will, I predict, move us toward greater equality in education and radically transform our world:

1. Literacy will increase dramatically and informally through mobile phones. Ambitious adults and children who lack access to formal education will nonetheless be able to increase their literacy through self-paced “learn to read” text lessons via simple cell phones they already own. Imagine what this means for the Asia-Pacific region, home to the largest number of illiterate adults worldwide at 518 million in 2008, according to UNESCAP. An interesting pilot is the SMS literacy project initiated in three districts in Pakistan by UNESCO and Mobilink. Adolescent girls were able to retain newly acquired literacy skills by using mobile phones to receive and send SMS messages in Urdu and copy them into their workbooks over a four-month period.

2. Language will cease to be the barrier it is today because of breakthroughs in localizing content. Exceptional ideas, techniques, and literature will more easily be shared, appreciated, and put into practice across cultures. Computer programmers are rapidly developing sophisticated tools that enable translation between languages at lightening speed and, increasingly, even account for cultural nuances in meaning. Although a human touch is still ideal for translation, this technology-driven localization solution will vastly change our lives and break down communication challenges among users of different languages. In the near future it means that students and reformers will more easily access the information they need even if it is not published in a language they speak.

3. Education will become widely accessible, more affordable, and less exclusive. Today, circumstances of birth, income, and geography greatly affect an individual’s ability to access quality education. This is changing rapidly in the higher education sphere thanks to the Open Education Resource (OER) movement and initiatives such as iTunes University and Open CourseWare (OCW). Launched by MIT in 2001 and supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the OCW Consortium’s 250 universities and associated organizations from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas offer more than 13,000 college level courses in 20 languages entirely free. The site boasts 133 million visits by 95 million visitors from virtually every country. The OCW Mirror Site Program provides the same content on hard drives to educational organizations with limited or costly internet access.

Distance learning is part of this phenomenon. Increasingly, governments, technology companies, and educators are partnering to upgrade capacity and extend education to remote areas. For example, in Sri Lanka, the cellular company Mobitel and the University of Colombo are beginning to offer post-graduate courses using broadband mobile links to students anywhere in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

While physical books will remain an appropriate technology for delivering education to our partners in many parts of Asia for years to come, technology’s potential to help Books for Asia meet its mission to improve access to information and opportunity is undeniable as we look ahead. That’s why we are launching a new “Technology Start-up Fund: Access for Asia.” The brand-new fund will support promising projects incubated by our in-country staff in collaboration with creative education organizations, publishers, technology companies, and donors.

Melody Zavala is the director of The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia Program. She can be reached at mzavala@asiafound.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.

Internet users in Laos are estimated at only 7 percent of the population as of 2010, the last time this data was gathered. But, despite how low this seems, that is double the number of users than in 2008. And, as the economy continues to grow, internet usage is steadily climbing in Laos. And, more and more citizens are using cheap smart phones imported from neighboring countries and other means to access the internet. Even in small towns, internet access points – generally small rooms with 4 to 10 computers – are popping up. The audience is often young boys playing video games. This is not surprising since there is so little information available online in the Lao language. While the media is state-run, Laos has no restrictions on internet access and no sites are blocked. There are just not that many things being written in Lao language.

Though largely unknown, Lao citizens are ensured freedom of speech under Article 44 of the Lao Constitution, which states that “Lao citizens have the right and freedom of speech, press and assembly; and have the right to set up associations and to state demonstration which are not contrary to the laws.”

The website, www.lao44.org, is the cyber embodiment of that constitutional right. Lao44.org (Lao44) is the biggest digital library in the Lao language and was the first-ever Lao-language discussion board. And it remains an active forum: according to the website counter, there were 1,001 visitors on the day of this writing. They also have 1,963 documents including articles, laws, reports and student theses on issues ranging from agriculture, health, and planning to almost anything imaginable. There are 345 videos. One of the most popular general comments on the site is people saying that they were unable to find a particular document anywhere, but that they then were able to find it on Lao44. The webmaster will also seek out documents at the users’ request and post them on the site.

The site was established by the Coalition for Lao Information Communication and Knowledge, or CLICK, in 2009 to provide a place for open discussion about current events in the Lao language. CLICK founders believed that information is an important factor in human resource development, and so “if people in rural areas have better access to information and have a platform for sharing information in the Lao language, it will help them to gain knowledge, and build their capacity to achieve a better livelihood.”

A volunteer works at CLICK's center in Vientiane. CLICK, established in 2009 to provide a place for open discussion about current events in the Lao language, launched the first-ever Lao-language discussion board. Photo by Marco Ryan.

Users range from students and civil society leaders to government ministers. It is perhaps this broad range of users and supporters that enable the site to address topics sometimes deemed too sensitive for discussion in this one-party state. For example, the site homepage currently poses the survey question, “Do you want the news talk radio program to come back?” which refers to the popular radio call-in program that recently disappeared from the air without warning or explanation.

The Asia Foundation is currently supporting CLICK to increase the site’s usage by university students and faculty, and to increase the number of university theses and articles uploaded to the site’s library.

We’ve also been working with the National University of Laos’ Central Library – the largest academic library in the country – to help provide appropriate technology and raise the IT skills of the library staff to better enable them to find information and help students and faculty. One training taught staff how to search for articles online, how to upload files, and how to subscribe to list-serves in order to get updated information. Another taught the staff how to use new digital library software, Dspace. “In the past, librarians wasted a lot of time filing, which resulted in slower service for customers and occasionally lost books. The new software will eliminate these problems,” the library director, Mr. Chansy Phuangsouketh, told the Vientiane Times. More than 500 students use the library each day, rising to 1,000 during exam periods. Ensuring that citizens have access to information and educational materials, as well as spaces such as these where they can discuss important issues, will be critical to all aspects of Laos’ ongoing development.

Gretchen Kunze is The Asia Foundation’s country representative in Laos. She can be reached at gkunze@asiafound.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.