Former Amazon.com Exec Among Winners For Annual "Innovations In Reading Prize"

SEATTLE - May 30, 2013 - PRLog -- The National Book Foundation has awarded its fifth annual Innovations in Reading Prizes to five organizations that are demonstrating passion, creativity, dedication, and leadership in the service of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading. Among the five winners are Worldreader, a nonprofit created in 2010 by David Risher (former Amazon.com executive) and Colin McElwee (former ESADE Business School's marketing director) whose mission is to make digital books available to children and their families in the developing world.

Worldreader, (www.worldreader.org), located in Seattle, Washington,
combines new technologies, the mobile phone networks, and declining costs to provide immediate access to hundreds of thousands of local textbooks, storybooks, and international literature.

Via its e-reader programs, Worldreader has delivered over 480,000 e-books, impacting nearly 10,000 children and families in six sub-Saharan African countries. In addition, through Worldreader Mobile―a book application―more than half a million people globally are reading a wide variety of books, from educational material to children’s books, all on a device they already own―their mobile phone. Worldreader partners with African publishers to make their books available to children in the e-reader programs, and to everyone through Worldreader Mobile. At the same time, Worldreader's international publishing partners make their books available at no cost, exposing children and families everywhere to some of the best-known literature in the world.

The other winners are City National Bank for Reading Is the Way Up®, (www.readingisthewayup.org), a program based on the belief that reading is vital to attaining career success and sponsors literary activities and programs for young people; Little Free Library, (www.littlefreelibrary.org), a movement that inspires people to erect structures to house free books for exchange in their communities; the Uni Project, (www.theuniproject.org), a portable reading room that transforms any public space into an environment for books and learning; and the Uprise Books Project, (www.uprisebooks.org), encourages underprivileged teens to read by providing them with "forbidden" books and a safe place to read and discuss them.

Each winner will receive $2,500, a framed certificate, and an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to attend a special luncheon at the Ford Foundation, where they will present their work to funders, other people in the field, and reporters. In addition, the winners will attend all National Book-Award related activities, including the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street on November 20, 2013.

Innovations in Reading is supported by a generous grant from Levenger.