Islamabad:Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), in collaboration with the Punjab Public Libraries Department, marked International Literacy Day 2026 at the Quaid-e-Azam Library, Lahore, under the theme ‘Libraries as Accelerators of Foundational Learning,’ says a press release.
The event brought together policy makers school leaders, storytellers, and Ambassadors of Foundation Learning to reflect on how interactive libraries can unlock the joy of reading and support foundational learning across Punjab and Pakistan.
The event opened with the national anthem, performed by differently abled children from Deaf Reach, setting an inclusive tone for a morning centred on children’s voices. In his opening remarks, Kashif Manzoor, Director General of Public Libraries, Punjab, reaffirmed the provincial government’s commitment to expanding access to libraries as part of Punjab’s foundational learning agenda.
Children were then drawn into an interactive storytelling session with children led by Sadia Sarmad and Waqas Manzoor providing rich examples of how to make stories come alive for vivid learning, followed by a presentation on the findings of a summative evaluation of ITA and Room to Read’s libraries established under Pakistan Literacy Project (PLP).
Since 2020, ITA has worked with Room to Read (R2R) and the School Education Department, Punjab to establish more than 70 school libraries across Punjab in government schools, training over 1,300 teachers and distributing more than 686,400 books to schools. This initiative, a part of the Pakistan Literacy Project (PLP) was built on a simple premise: children need more than textbooks to become active readers. They need access to good storybooks, dedicated time to read, enabling school environment and teachers, and the freedom to choose what they read.
An independent rigorous evaluation of the project (schools with and without intervention) found that 94% of children in program schools borrowed books to read at home, compared with just 6% in comparison schools. 80% of children in program schools selected their own books during school hours, against 20% in comparison schools, and 72% had read a book for enjoyment in the previous five days, more than double the rate in comparison schools. Notably, library routines remained strong even after direct project support ended: more than a year after ITA and R2R withdrew intensive support, over 85% of program schools continued to run scheduled library periods, sustained by schools and communities themselves.
The findings anchored a wide-ranging panel discussion moderated by Baela Raza Jamil, CEO of ITA, bringing together voices from across Punjab’s education and library landscape: Omer Iftikhar Sherazi, Programme Director at the Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit (PMIU); Syeda Basarat Kazim, President of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY-Pakistan); Rehana Kousar, Consultant at Chughtai Public Library; Syeda Kanwal Bukhari, Operations Manager Children’s Library at Chughtai Public Library; and Salha Ibrar Ahmad of Deaf Reach. T
he conversation ranged from taking libraries beyond conventional walls to what access to reading must mean for a deaf child, and how government schools can sustain a library once outside project support ends. Additional remarks were shared by Dr. Zubda Zia Ur Rehman, Managing Director of Academics at the Punjab Education Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA), alongside voices from the children’s storytelling community.
