Culture & Education | Thursday 11 February, 2016 7:50 am |

Knowledge without Borders (KwB) is holding a press conference on February 15 at Al Noor Island to announce the launch of a new cultural initiative in line with 2016 being declared as the Year of Reading by President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and under the continuous directives of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah,

 

 

KwB, a Sharjah-based cultural project, aims to spread the love of reading in Sharjah and across the UAE. This new initiative announcement is being made in the presence of Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Head of the Organizing Committee of KwB, and will be the first of its kind in the UAE. It focuses on encouraging Emirati authors, writers and publishers to increase their contributions to the literary and intellectual sphere and by doing so elevate Arabic culture.  

Set up in 2008, Knowledge without Borders has launched initiatives that promote the hobby of reading among Emirati families in Sharjah. Its main initiative aims to create a home library in every Emirati household and has distributed one million books to 20,000 Emirati families in Sharjah, tailored to the individual interests and age of each family member. The books vary in type from non-fiction, science books to young adult novels. The second stage of the final phase of the project aims to provide 250,000 books to a further 5000 families in Sharjah during 2016. 

Another project launched by KwB is the “Air Library” initiative which is in collaboration with Air Arabia. Under this project all Air Arabia flights going to select locations such as Cairo, Amman and Beirut carry a cart of books for passengers to choose from. All the books are a maximum of 200 pages so that they can be finished during the course of the flight. And through this project KwB hopes to extend the reading culture to travelers and making it a way of life.

Knowledge without Borders was launched as an initiative by His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, and is supervised and supported by Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Head of the Organizing Committee of KwB. The initiative aims to establish reading as a habit in every household in the UAE, by encouraging the establishment of home libraries, and supplying these libraries with best books of  various genres suitable for the entire family.