Kampong Speu Provincial Library will initiate a three-day campaign to promote reading called “One book, One Community” to encourage reading and the public’s use of library services, after which the campaign will continue on to other towns and provinces.

The campaign will take place from January 13-15, with support from Riel Tiger Solutions, Business Record, Scholar Library and other partners.

The Kampong Speu Provincial Library said in its announcement that this programme aims to jointly promote reading in the community and raise awareness with the public about how reading is the key to success in learning and the importance of reading to one’s career path and life planning with talks by some of the leading motivational speakers in Cambodia.

“The three-day programme will also feature free distribution of books to the public and the chance for young readers to demonstrate their skills by participating in public reading competitions,” the statement said.

Soeung Saran, director of the Kampong Speu Library, said that the winners of this competition may go on to the national reading competition whose winners will have the opportunity to visit Japan.

He said that this event, being held for the first time by the library, will give readers the opportunity to learn how to find a wide range of books available to match their interests.

“This programme will start at the Kampong Speu Library, and it takes place on January 13, 14, and 15 before it continues to other provinces throughout the country,” he said.

Saran said people from all walks of life can benefit by reading and that increasing the prevalence of reading in Cambodian society is going to be key to the development of the country now and in the future because reading is essential to education and educated people are essential human resources for every sector of society.

The One Book, One Community Campaign is a project designed to promote reading to young people in Cambodia through various approaches: Reading competitions, distribution of books, mobile libraries, library development.

The project has plans in place for the 25 month period from February 2023 to January 2025, according to the announcement of the One Book, One Community Campaign Project.

Sok Lak, Co-Founder of Intellectual Library and a co-founder of the One Book, One Community Campaign, said that Kampong Speu Library is the first place that they will implement some of their activities and after that they will bring them to every part of the Kingdom.

“This project will help encourage some institutions to embrace a culture of reading and knowledge in their operations. We will be giving out 25,000 books at 25 libraries and we hope to reach tens of thousands of readers across the capital and provinces,” he said.

According to the 2014 Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey, Cambodia has the second lowest literacy rate in ASEAN after Laos and about 29 per cent of the population lacks basic reading and writing skills.