Reading For Pleasure

Reading for Pleasure is a five-year pilot programme created by the Emirates Literature Foundation to foster a lifelong love of reading in children. The project seeks to engage students, parents, and teachers — otherwise known as the three points of the “education triangle” — with activities proven to help inspire a love of reading to create centres of reading excellence within select schools across the UAE. To measure the initiative’s effectiveness, the Foundation has partnered with Zayed University, UAE University, and Birmingham University (in both the UAE and the UK) to carry out in-depth research over the next five years. And to further optimise the project’s efforts, any feedback gathered will be used to refine the programme, allowing for potential upscaling down the line. Studies have shown that an ability to enjoy reading has not only been proven to improve a child’s performance in their academic career, but it’s also key to helping them hit a range of physical, mental, and emotional well-being markers that are crucial to developing healthy, well-adjusted adults. But it’s not just important that children simply read a lot. We also believe that books should provide readers with both a window and a mirror. Children need to see themselves and their world in books and be allowed to explore and discover. Our carefully curated list of books helps these young readers with a selection of books, in both Arabic and English, within their classroom and school libraries. This ensures that the range of books offered varies across topics and interests, while also being both culturally and age sensitive.