Academy for Educational Development

The Egypt National Book Program, managed by AED, seeks to increase school children’s access to high quality books and instructional materials in school libraries and classrooms.

The National Book Program works with an Egyptian nongovernmental organization, the Integrated Care Society (ICS) as well as the Ministry of Education in Egypt to select, procure and provide books and educational materials for children’s extracurricular reading, and to promote reading for enjoyment as a national goal. ICS, under the leadership of Egyptian First Lady Madame Suzanne Mubarak, will monitor the use of the materials in Egyptian classrooms and school libraries and raise the importance of reading and authorship for children among the Egyptian public. The program is contributing to the development of a strong market demand so that high quality children’s books will be published and printed in Egypt. Use of children’s literature from other countries has also been recognized as a strong tool contributing to tolerance, cross-cultural understanding and peace, and has become a major component of the booklists offered to children and young people in developed nations.

In the first year (April 2005 – March 2006) the program will supply small libraries of 525 books per school to 15,496 schools – every primary school in Egypt. Additional educational materials produced under USAID-funded projects will be provided to 20,709 schools including an active learning kit, Egyptian Sesame Street (Alam Simsim) booklets, and AED/GreenCOM project-produced environmental education materials for teachers and students.