(VOVworld) - The Center for Knowledge Assistance and Community Development (CKACD) has been awarded the 2016 UNESCO Literacy Prize for its program “Books for rural areas of Vietnam.”

Nguyen Quang Thach (center) has made trans-Vietnam trip to call for book donation for children in rural areas. (Photo: Duc Loc)

Initiated by young Vietnamese man Nguyen Quang Thach, the program aims to bring books to the most rural areas of Vietnam, develop a reading culture there, and encourage rural children to read to improve public intellectual standards.

Thach began his work in 2007 with three libraries and expanded with the help of funding to build 28 libraries in nine provinces.

In 2010 he founded the Center for Knowledge Assistance and Community Development and began the first trans-national tour to mobilize for the program which has now engaged more than 100,000 people. Most of them are farmers who help to finance it through crowdfunding.