Our Social Enterprise Agenda

The challenge

Nearly 750 million people in the world are illiterate. While some countries have made significant progress in increasing literacy among children and adults, it still remains a major challenge especially in the more remote areas of the world and in emerging markets. UNESCO identified having access to a "literate environment" as one of the critical factors in supporting literacy development. If children do not have regular access to engaging books and other reading materials to practice their literacy skills, they are less likely to become lifelong readers and learners. And this inhibits economic opportunity and growth.

We at Ultimate Library are committed to creating a better educated world. We believe that books are a key building block of the education system for their entertainment value and the inspiration they provide - in the digital age they remain the primary tool for reading development and they regularly need updating. We also recognize that in many areas of the world access to books of any kind is woefully lacking and we are committed to helping change this.

Our approach

Tourism is often the bridgehead for local economic development and with that comes tremendous responsibility for sustainable development and cultural sensitivity. in many cases our clients already have outreach programmes and our approach is to work with them to establish children's libraries in communities where poverty, ethnicity, or other social and cultural barriers put children at a significant educational disadvantage. We believe that we have a common purpose in that often these communities are the source of many hotel employees. By engaging children with books in a fun and meaningful way, our programme helps children develop a lifelong habit of reading and a brigher future.

Many of our clients' properties are in the most beautiful, but under-developed areas of the world. And they are closely aligned to their environment, supporting the local community through employment, education and other means. We too wish to play our part and for every hotel library we supply, we will donate a reading and reference library to their local community school, orphanage or other educational support group. The training we provide to your staff in caring for and maintaining your guest library is the template for your local community. Our sustainability commitment is that every time we resupply your hotel guest library we will send more books for your adopted community. Together we will create a better educated world.

Our objectives are simple - we want to:

• Accelerate learning through access to high quality books and reading materials.
• Increase literacy in schools and local communities and integrate library resources into children's learning environments.
• Make it last by fostering local acountabiity through training of librarians and/or teachers to ensure the libraries are well run and prosper.

Where do we focus?

Children are our future and children's books are where we primarily focus. We recognise also that the right books supplied for your staff library will accelerate their understanding of English and their ability to speak it. While each library has the same core building blocks of picture books and good old fashioned stories, each library is tailored to specific environments - for example a recent library supplied through the Lewa game lodge in Kenya included biographies of black role models like Michael Jordan, Lewis Hamilton and Didier Drogba.

Many of the books we supply have just pictures. For in places like Kenya, South Africa and Asia, many children come from largely oral storytelling traditions and the shift to the written word is a difficult transition. Many of these children have never been read to aloud, and they find it difficult to relate the "spoken" word to the "written" word.

How to engage?

Today every new hotel we supply is offered a Blackwell community library as as part of their contract. All we ask in return is that you make a commitment to meet a few simple criteria.

For more details please email Philip Blackwell at pb@ultimatelibrary.co.uk