Ethiopia Reads

Literacy does more than help children read: it helps them thrive. Children with strong literacy skills are often more confident, curious, and engaged with the world around them. Reading can open doors to learning, imagination, and opportunities that support both their happiness and their future successes. Help us bring the joy of reading to more children in Ethiopia by clicking the link in our bio!

Calling all volunteers!

This summer, we're hosting a booth at the 43rd Annual ESFNA Soccer Tournament & Cultural Festival, the largest Ethiopian diaspora event in the world. Join us in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis from June 27-July 4, 2026 to connect with the diaspora, help us share our story, and build the movement for literacy in Ethiopia.

Click the link in our bio to sign up for a volunteer shift, no experience needed!

Early literacy skills lay the foundation for a child's future learning, confidence, and opportunity. When children experience the joy of reading at a young age, they build essential language and thinking skills, bringing success in school and beyond.

Swipe for 3 simple ways to build early literacy at home!

Millions of children in Ethiopia are eager to learn, but too few have access to books in their own language. With over 50 million children, many mother tongue languages taught in schools, and few attractive storybooks available, building a reading culture means creating stories that reflect children’s own lives, communities, and dreams.

That’s why Ethiopia Reads always works to promote access to Ethiopian language books, support Ethiopian publishers, and distribute culturally authentic, age-appropriate books to children across the country. One of our most important collaborators, , has created over 175 illustrated storybook titles in 15 Ethiopian languages. Since 2017, with the support of various donors, Ethiopia Reads has printed and distributed close to 500,000 copies in most of these languages to schools and families. The photo shows a mother and child reading a storybook in Afar Af, the language spoken by close to 3 million in the hot, dry NE of Ethiopia, where we brought books to families affected by conflict.

Every child deserves stories they can see themselves in.

This International Day of Families, we’re celebrating the parents and caregivers in Addis Ababa who love their children and are learning through the ECD program how better to help their young children discover the joy of reading. We know that young working families in cities face immense pressures, especially those in urban environments with high cost of living and far from extended family networks. When it comes to cognitive development and early learning, support and resources for parents and caregivers is crucial: a parent with the resources and time to share stories with their children is their most powerful teacher.

Our contribution to the Addis Ababa City Early Childhood Development program is training 5,000 parent health coaches who will visit 300,000 families across the city, coach caregivers, and help ensure that young children and their families have access to high-quality, age-appropriate books in their own languages.

Because those who read, bloom!

Yesterday our team working on the ECD program was at the Addis International Early Childhood Conference learning from other countries’ experiences! Hosted by the African Center for Early Childhood Development, this exciting event brings together policymakers, development partners, educators, and experts from across Africa in a discussion of how to best support the next generation. The 8 board books we developed for the Addis Ababa ECD project - the first at scale in the country - are also on display Van Leer Foundation

We are honored to be involved in this initiative, and proud to be part of a movement that puts our youngest children first!

Over the past decades, Ethiopia Reads has reached hundreds of thousands of children across every region of Ethiopia, planted over 80 libraries, trained educators, coached parents, supported Ethiopian authors and illustrators, taken books in multiple Ethiopian languages to children affected by conflict, and promoted reading in government, schools, and within the home. The scale and scope of our work has grown steadily since our modest beginnings when we established the first public children’s library in Ethiopia in 2003. None of this would have been possible without the generous support of our donors.

Every donation counts, and brings us one step closer to realizing our mission of creating a culture of reading in Ethiopia, where every child has access to good books and support for reading. Click the link in our bio or scan the QR code to make a donation today, or go to ethiopiareads.org/donate !

Our Library of Congress award-winning Horse-Powered Library was featured in Hidden Libraries, a Lonely Planet illustrated travel book showcasing 50 unique and unusual libraries around the world! We are honored to be included with other amazing collections such as the International Space Station Library orbiting 260 miles above earth, the Little Free Library of the South Pole, and the Ahmed Baba Library of 13th-18th century manuscripts in Timbuktu, Mali.

Our horseback libraries allow educators and books to reach children in remote rural communities. Since 2011, our Horse-Powered Literacy Program has been bringing books, storytelling, and basic education to children in three locations in southern Ethiopia.

Many children who attend HPL sessions live far from schools, and begin formal schooling late due to long travel distances and their parent's safety concerns. Mobile libraries on horseback bring learning closer to home, and allow children to develop vital literacy skills from within their own villages.

In addition to story reading and read-aloud sessions, students engage in structured learning activities including mathematics, English, and science. In March of 2026, we had 321 children participate across three locations!

How do you educate and coach 300,000 families with young children on how to better support their babies and toddlers’ early learning and development? It’s a big challenge, especially when few parents had their own childhood experience of books or reading at home. In Addis Ababa, the city administration is working to reach these families through its integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) program by engaging 5,000 parent health coaches. Ethiopia Reads is designing and delivering the training to the coaches through a train the trainer approach.

Last week, we hosted a two-day ECD early learning training for 45 trainers at the Abrehot Library, alongside the Addis Ababa City Administration, the Addis Ababa ECD Program, and supported by Van Leer Foundation.

This first round of training was created for supervisors, coordinators, and professionals from childcare centers, and was focused on building skills to strengthen children’s engagement with language, books, and reading. Once trained, they will go on to share their knowledge and skills with the parent coaches they lead. These coaches in turn will bring baby and toddler books to their homes, and encourage and support strong reading and language development practices in the home.

Through a series of training events like this to reach all parent coach supervisors, and with helpful supporting materials and videos to reinforce and support the training, we are helping to build a network of literacy advocates to support young families with early learning and development.

Because those who read, bloom!

As Autism Awareness Month comes to a close, we wanted to highlight one of Open Hearts Big Dreams Fund bilingual children’s books, “I Love You Baby Bird”. Written by our board member Elizabeth Taylor, this story is about communication with neurodivergent children. Elizabeth worked with experts from to tell the story of a young bird who struggles to communicate and how his community adapts.

We believe that every child deserves to see themselves in stories, and that representation in children’s books is vital to sparking a lifelong love of reading.