FC Barcelona backs global campaign to send one million e-books to Ghana, other African countries

Spanish football giant, FC Barcelona (Barça) is backing a global campaign aimed at sending one million electronic books to students in four African countries including Ghana by the end of 2012.

The other countries are Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

The campaign which kicked-off May 24, 2012 is being championed by Worldreader, a non-profit organization founded in 2009 by former Microsoft and Amazon executive David Risher and Colin McElwee who is a former Marketing Director at Barcelona’s ESADE Business School.

“Worldreader is committed to putting a digital library in the hands of all children throughout the world’s developing countries, and we’re thrilled with the support of FC Barcelona to send one million e-books to students in Africa,” said David Risher, CEO and Co-Founder of Worldreader in a statement.

Worldreader believed that the popularity of Barça will inspire students to continue reading as they see messages sent to them by some of the team’s players like Messi, Xavi among others.

“Appealing to the students’ love of Barça, some of the team’s biggest names including Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernandez, Eric Abidal and Seydou Keita, send encouraging messages to students inspiring them to read more and “score big”,” the organization said.

Worldreader is therefore seeking donations of at least $5 to buy the planned million e-books.

Worldreader launched the first iREAD project in Ghana in November 2010. The project was the first pilot study to ever involve classroom use of e-readers in underprivileged areas.

This is the second time Ghana will be benefitting from a Barça-backed educational project. The first was with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) where the club will contribute a total of €1.5 million per year to support the UN agency’s education programme aimed at reaching millions of children in 16,000 schools in Ghana, Brazil, China, and South Africa.

Over 5,000 teachers and coaches are planned to be trained under the Barça-UNICEF programme.

By Ekow Quandzie