PhnomPenhPost-Sept 20, 2022
Volunteers from civil society and the private sector jointly launched the “Promote Community-Based Reading in Cambodia’s capital and 24 provinces” campaign to raise support for the implementation of the “One Book-One Community” project at the beginning of 2023. According to the announcement of the One Book-One Community project on its Facebook page, the campaign is part of a fundraiser to support community-based reading throughout the country. Heang Vathy, owner of Riel Tiger Solutions Co Ltd, which is a co-founder of project, told The Post on September 19 that in order to implement the project in the future they had come up with a number of events and fundraisers to gain support from the public, development partners and government institutions. “So far, we have received support from more than 30 institutions. Those institutions are partly from the private sector as well as libraries and the general public along with those representing writers. Everyone can support this initiative by donating books and helping to arrange an event or by giving a small donation to make the project work,” she said. According to the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey conducted in 2014, Cambodia has the second-lowest literacy rate in ASEAN after Laos. It said about 29 per cent of the population lacks basic literacy skills. The National Youth Development Council (NYDC 2021) report said that Cambodia is a youthful country with 32 per cent aged 10-24 years. It said 71 per cent of youth were not in formal education. Heang Vathy said these sorts of statistics were the factors that led the team of volunteers to jointly create this project to promote reading in the community by creating reading competitions, undertaking book distribution efforts, creating mobile libraries and developing existing libraries across the entire Kingdom. Read more at: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/volunteers-launch-nationwide-effort-promote-book-reading
