Robert Wilson

“READ International sees a world where young global citizens achieve development through the power of education,” says social entrepreneur Robert Wilson. “We believe in youth action, global citizenship, empowering young leaders, and collaboration.”

Robert is the founder of READ International (READ stands for Recycling Education Allowing Development), which he started while at university in Nottingham. His charity oversees and co-ordinates a group of regional ‘Tanzania Book Projects’; based at English universities, which gather books, computers, sports and lab equipment and other educational resources, which are then to be redistributed to regions in Tanzania.

The idea for READ International came when Robert realised that, because the learning curriculums in schools and universities are changed so often, there are vast numbers of perfectly good text books that simply become redundant, and could therefore be re-used.

The way READ International operates is simple. As Tanzania's syllabus is based on the UK system and all secondary school classes are taught in English, the book projects that Robert implements collect the ‘out of date’ books from local English schools, and take them away to sort. They then take these supplies of textbooks and distribute them to Tanzanian schools, allowing these books to help develop the minds of another generation of children.

READ International started as just one book project. Within 18 months 40,000 textbooks had been donated by local schools and £8000 had been raised to fund the project. In 2005 the first container arrived in Tanzania. 25,000 good quality text books, 20 computers and various items of sports equipment were distributed to 20 secondary schools in the Singida region of Tanzania.

Robert’s big break came when he was asked by Student Volunteering England to showcase his initial achievements at the National Student Volunteering Conference in 2006. He used the opportunity to launch his newly registered charity. His idea was incredibly well received and within 24 hours Robert had 25 universities who wanted to join him to create a national network of Tanzanian book projects.

READ International continues to go from strength to strength. Robert’s entrepreneurial endeavors have won him a number of awards. In 2006 He made it on to the shortlist in the ‘Social and Environmental’ category of the Enterprising Young Brit awards, and he also won the ?WhatIf! Millennium Award for young social entrepreneurs. In 2007 he won the Charity Times award for Best New UK Charity.

Robert is inspired by the idea of creating a project that is significant and long-lasting. “I just want to know that I helped create something special,” he says. “I want to stand at the back of a READ International event in 50 years time and just nod and smile.” He works alongside fellow Make Your Mark Ambassador David Erasmus on the No PCproject, which aims to put a computer in every secondary school in Tanzania.