Sue Blaine
4 November 2008
Johannesburg — John Wood was an executive with Microsoft who loved to backpack, until he could no longer turn a blind eye to what he saw on his travels.
WHEN John Wood got good marks at school he used to ask his parents if his reward could be that he be allowed to stay up an hour longer to read.
It isn't surprising, then, that he now runs a nongovernmental organisation that this year is spending $22m to take books to children who would not otherwise have them, build libraries and send girls to school.
What is surprising is that he gave up a lucrative career at global information technology giant Microsoft -- he was the company's business development manager for the China region -- to do that.
What is even more surprising is that he made the move around the time of the 2000 stock market crash.
"It was a terrible time to start something like this. Then came (September 11) 2001 and it was even harder to convince Americans to do things overseas," he says.
Now, seven years later, amid the biggest financial meltdown since the 1929 crash that plunged the world into a depression , Wood is in SA to get the country's large corporations to sponsor his cause.
Wood's goal, which he says is purposefully ambitious, is to help 10-million children achieve literacy by 2020. His organisation, Room to Read, has a staff of six in SA where, since its 2006 launch, it has established 65 multilingual libraries, and published 38000 original local language children's books.
"This year our total international budget is $22m ... and we'll raise $25m or $26m, but numbers are numbers. I like to tell people what that relatively small amount of money (the $22m) will do. It will open more than 200 schools, about 2000 libraries and add 1,5-million books to the libraries we've already set up. It will also support 7000 girls on long-term scholarships to go to school ," he says.
Since he packed in his laptop and business suit in 1999 to start up Room to Read, Wood has established more than 5100 libraries, built 442 schools, published 226 local language children's titles and given scholarships to 4000 girls.
In short, he has had an effect on the lives of 1,7-million children across the world, some of them in SA. Most of this activity has been in Asia, but Wood and his right-hand woman, Alison Rouse, are working hard to turn Room to Read into a global concern.
Although his career is not a conventional one for an MBA graduate, Wood's alma mater, the solid Kellogg School of Management, must be proud.
It all began with a journey to the east. "I've always been a traveller," he says. "There are so many places that are good to go to as a backpacker, but there is so much poverty.
"I thought, there had to be something wrong when the kids are asking you for a pencil, or you ask them why they are not in school and they say it's because the fees are too high. And then you find out that the fees are $3."
He started helping a few kids -- a pencil here, a scholarship there -- and so the seeds of what became Room to Read were planted.
"Education is your best ticket out of poverty. You can spend a small amount of money and it can have a huge impact, an intergenerational one. Look at the raw numbers ... in the developing world, 130-million kids are not in secondary school and there are 800-million illiterates in the world. Two-thirds of both (the children not in school and the illiterates) are girls and women. That has an impact on the world's future."
Multiple studies have shown the very real impact a mother's education has on the lives of her children.
"I looked at it (the out-of-school and illiteracy problem) as a businessman and said, 'How can you scale it?'"
The abstract turned into the practical when Wood travelled to Nepal, where he met a school principal who asked him to help his school create a library.
"There was a library room, but no books, no desks, no chairs ... I said I would help, and then a teacher said that lots of backpackers promised help, but none of them ever came back to actually give that help. A year later I was back, with 3000 books on the backs of donkeys," says Wood.
"They were books about African wildlife, actually, some of them. The rings of Saturn.... When I saw the looks on the children's faces, they'd never seen colourful children's books, I decided to go back to Microsoft and resign," he says.
Although Wood had made his decision, he wrestled with it a lot beforehand.
"I had to soul-search quite a lot. There were a lot of uncertainties, the loss of income and stock options, the loss of status. You go to dinner parties and one of the first things people ask you is, 'What do you do?' Your status is your job, and now I say, 'I deliver books on the back of donkeys to children in the Himalayas,' and they say, 'No, that's your hobby, what do you do?' and I say, 'That is what I do'."
The call of the book was strong, though, and Wood's own family experience had shown him what a hand up, education-wise, could do for a family.
Wood's father, one of seven children who grew up in the city of Denver, Colorado, went to university on a scholarship that gave him a degree in civil engineering and changed the trajectory of his life.
"You cannot imagine what a scholarship, and a good, well-run school and good school and community libraries for their children, did for my parents," he says.
With the image of what education had done for the Wood family in his head and the knowledge that he had earned "enough money to take a risk", Wood made his decision. He hung up his designer ties.
The decision has changed not only his life, but the lives of millions of children, and has made Wood happier than he's ever been.
"I've learned a lot. First, parents are the same everywhere: they want their kids to have a better life than they had. Also, the work ethic in some of the poorest parts of the world is very strong, and that is part of our business thinking. We can't help people if they don't want to help themselves. If they turn up to build a school, okay," he says.
Wood attributes a lot of Room to Read's success to his considerable experience as a businessman. He ran significant parts of Microsoft's international business as the marketing director for the Asia-Pacific division, director of the Internet Customer Unit for Microsoft Australia, and director of marketing for Microsoft Australia.
"As a businessman I dared to think big. When big businesses see opportunities they grow and they hire.... Bold goals attract bold people. For me it was non-negotiable to go big, while in a lot of NGOs (nongovernmental organisations) there is this pressure to stay small. Run to Read is run like a blue-chip company," he says.
This bold thinking has won the support of household names such as banking giants Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Wood's former employer Microsoft, and now, with his new venture in Zambia, Lafarge cement.
Wood may be an optimist, but he is not unaware that the problems of the world are huge. Still, they do not leave him awake at night.
"People are often paralysed by the big problems out there, but we (Room to Read) are driven by the solutions. We say, 'We can. It is in our power to build a school, stock a library....' People are very energised by that. That's how we've grown.... No, I don't have moments of doubt, every single day we make a difference. On average we are building five libraries a day," he says.
When Wood started Room to Read he was working out of his second bedroom and it was only when US technology magazine Fast Company wrote an article about his quest to bring books to children in November 2002 that he realised his dream could truly become reality.
"I'd been seven days in the Himalayas and I went to a cyber cafe and got 700 e-mails. We were inundated with offers of help and I knew," he says.
What he doesn't say is that he's won the magazine's social capital award five times -- one of many he has won for the work he has done since he turned the page on his old job, and opened a brand new book.
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