I've loved reading for most of my 50yrs. Being a regular international traveller over the last 15 yrs I peruse the books in the airports we travel through frequently and it was here more than 5yrs ago that I picked up John Wood's book Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Read it in a couple of days, visited the Australian website on a return journey and volunteered from that point.

Why? There is no greater empowerment than literacy in our world. There is no higher need than to equalise humanity via this beautiful level - that so many of us enjoy and take for granted. And there is still so very little that is done to correct ignorant gender bias in respect of girls' education whether that is due to conflict, cultural issues, religion or poverty or anything else.

John Wood had his defining moment in Nepal and made a promise and saw it through and has not stopped. I love the transparency of Room to Read. I adore that it has created and continues to do so, brand new local industries in the form of publishing, illustration, and social community welfare with and respectfully through local people. I love that people in countries where very few cared before now have a publishing industry thriving with books in their local language. I love that more and more children can get to go to school, that more and more girls are afforded the right they have to get an education and that more and more communities will be strengthened and lifted out of poverty to better their lives but more importantly their communities lives and hence their countries.

I am proud and privileged to do the little that I do as a volunteer for Room to Read - it shares in my mind the excellence, transparency, commitment and results of an NGO on par with Medecins Sans Frontieres which is the only other NGO I give my time and resources to.

Barely two years ago I read John Wood's book Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. I finished the book in a few days, went onto the website for Room to Read and ask how I could help or volunteer. I give my time to only two other fully transparent and amazing NGO's - Medecins Sans Frontieres and Youth off the Streets. Along now with Room to Read these NGO's deal with and are effective with the most simplest of concepts. Understanding humanity, caring for humans and believing that World Change begins with children, MSF with their amazing work around the globe, YOTS and their incredible care of abused and forgotten children and young people and Room to Read - their own catch-cry being very correctly: World Changes Starts with Educated Children - empowering girls/women in particular in developing nations to equalize the phenomenal imbalance that we all know exists in regards to the genders and education. Anyone needs only look at the Room to Read statistics now over 12 years, go visit sites in 10 countries, or even whilst in countries where R2R operates talk to the local people. I'm proud to be a very small part of an amazing NGO that hourly, daily, yearly is making the world a much better place for humans.