Project Description

'ASEAN Children’s Reading Culture Development Project' is a 3-year-project that aims to improve the children’s reading cultural environment and to raise children‘s literacy level in ASEAN. Through the Project, (1) a cooperation basis of mutual development consist of ASEAN-ROK national library leaders and children’s librarians named as  'ASEAN-ROK Children’s Reading Culture Development Committee(AKRCC)'  will be formed; (2) communal goals and its implementation plan to promote children’s reading culture in ASEAN will be set up by AKRCC; (3) collaborative  PR (public relations) strategy will be carried out to raise the awareness among ASEAN people on the importance of children’s reading culture; and (4) study on current status will be conducted to make an analytic approach on the reading culture development issue and draw tangible results.

AKRCC will consent to an agreement on implementation of communal goals, and the main idea of the communal goals are (1) securing infrastructure to build a valid reading culture environment; (2) raising the ASEAN people’s awareness on the importance of children’s reading culture;  and (3) enhancement on the competence of children’s librarians. The agreement is the keystone of this Project which leads AKRCC to achieve the Project’s ultimate aims; to improve the children’s reading culture environment and to raise children‘s literacy level in ASEAN. In relation to this, it is likely that the Project can contribute to some of the pillars mentioned in the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025 which are A.2 Empowered People and Strengthened Institutions; B.1 Reducing Barriers; B.2 Equaltable Access for All; B.3 Promotion and Protection of Human Rights; C.2 Environmentally Sustainable Cities; and E.2 Towards a Creative, Innovative and Responsive ASEAN.

Communal goals and its implementation plan to promote children’s reading culture in ASEAN will be developed in the first year; and an interim review on implementation and a training program will be held to help the ASEAN national libraries to achieve their goals in the second year; while the outcomes of the ASEAN children’s reading culture development for the last three years will be shared through a final review on implementation, and AKRCC’s next-phase measures will be discussed in the third year.

Introduction of Proponents/Implementing Agencies

Organization overview

· National Library for Children and Young Adults of Korea - Korea’s leading library specialized in children’s and youth services

The National Library for Children and Young Adults of Korea (NLCY) specializes in children and young adults. Since its opening on June 28, 2006, as the representative library for children and young adults in Korea, NLCY has been systematically collecting knowledge & information resources issued in the field of children and young adults and housed 710,000 books, the largest volume in Korea. In addition, NLCY provides research materials for children and young adults as well as for researchers related to children and young adults. Furthermore, to form the right reading habits and spread the reading culture, NLCY develops various cultural reading programs and specialized content which is disseminated to nationwide libraries, and also runs capacity-building programs for the librarians in charge of children and young adults. NLCY drives forward in cooperation with domestic and international libraries and relevant organizations.

The Main Project conducted by the National Library for Children and Young Adults of Korea is as follows:

• Creative and Hands on Children’s programs for future leaders of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Personalized reading culture programs for children and teens for realizing the pleasure and benefits of reading
• Projects to Support Reading Culture Promotion for Children and Youth
• Collect materials that are relevant in the field of Children and Youth
• Capacity-building for librarians and research support
• Build cooperation relationship between libraries and related organizations in Korea and abroad

Experience of working with ASEAN

· ‘Training Project for ASEAN Children’s Librarians’ from 2010 to 2017

The National Library for Children and Young Adults has implemented the ‘Training Project for ASEAN Children’s Librarians’ from 2010 to 2017 funded by the ASEAN-ROK Cooperation Fund, having 158 ASEAN children’s librarians complete the training, while the satisfaction rate of the participation was over 90% for the eighth consecutive year.

· Holding ‘2019 ASEAN-ROK Library Leadership Conference on Reading Promotion’

Based on cooperative relationships formed by the program, 'Training Project for ASEAN Children’s Librarians', ‘2019 ASEAN-ROK Library Leadership Conference’ was held from 5^th to 11^th of November in 2019 for sharing children’s activities on reading promotion in ASEAN countries and for discussion on cooperative measures to kick-start reading promotion culture. At the conference, the representatives from ASEAN and ROK have established the Joint-Agreement and put a cornerstone for the development of children’s reading culture.

·’2020 ASEAN-ROK Joint-Project: The Yellow Apron Hashtag Challenge’

As the joint-project confirmed in the ‘ASEAN-ROK Library Leadership Conference on Reading Promotion’ ASEAN-ROK SNS (Social Network Service) reading campaign ‘The Yellow Apron Hashtag Challenge’ was implemented for 100 days (from January 15 to April 23, 2020)

This campaign was originally the domestic reading project in which librarians wearing yellow aprons read books for children to form the right reading habits and it was expanded to the whole ASEAN region. Through the campaign, 31,708 photos and videos on reading activities were posted on Instagram which indicates the high level of participation.