Room to Read Boston - This Thursday - Don't Miss It!

I'm just back from our prep meeting in anticipation of our November 5th event, where Room to Read Founder John Wood will be joining us. In case you've somehow missed my past blogs on this topic, Room to Read was founded in 2000, and is focused on creating educational opportunities for kids in the developing world.

I've had the pleasure of seeing John Wood speak on a few occasions now, and he's one of the top three speakers I've ever seen in action. John is a three-time speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative, a five-time winner of Fast Company’s Social Capitalist Award and the only non-Asian to be honored with TIME Magazine’s Asian Heroes Award.

So come join us on Thursday evening, when we'll be hosting a fundraiser at the Harvard Club. We've got a really stellar auction lineup, including:

-A private flight to Nantucket piloted by a former TOPGUN instructor for a day of golf, for two
New England Patriots game day package – four tickets with an on-field pass
- A jersey signed by New England Patriot Wes Welker
Two Red Sox box seat tickets for a 2010 Yankees game (I know - it’s a painful subject at the moment.)
- A Good Will Hunting movie poster signed by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Robin Williams and Minnie Driver
- A week’s stay at a private home in Burgundy, France
- A week’s stay on Nantucket
- Stays at private homes on Cape Cod
- A vintage JFK campaign hat, circa 1960
- Signed Red Sox photos and gear
- A beer tasting at Harpoon Brewery, for 80 people
- A one-year membership to Boston Ski & Sports Club
- Original photography and artwork
- Gift certificates from area restaurants, salons, yoga studios and florists

Tickets are available online until end of day Wednesday, November 4.

Room to Read Boston - Join us November 12 at Elephant Walk!

Elephant Walk has long been a favorite restaurant, with its exotic blend of Cambodian and French cuisine. Imagine my delight that the chefs at Elephant Walk not only agreed to host our Room to Read fundraiser on November 12th (7-9 p.m.), but two of them will be presenting on Cambodia and its cuisine. (This event kicks off a modest campaign by the Boston Chapter to build 10 libraries -- "reading rooms" -- in Cambodia, at a cost of approximately $40,000.)

We're very honored to have Elephant Walk's founding chef, Longteine de Monteiro, (above) speak that evening. She's had a remarkable life, having been born into an upper class Cambodian family and married to a prominent diplomat, and then been forced to flee the country in 1975, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Her family settled for several years in France, where Madame de Monteiro ("Nyep" to her friends) opened her first restaurant to keep the family afloat. She had no previous business experience and no formal training as a chef.

In the early 90s, the family moved to the States, which had long been their objective. Elephant Walk was born, and the restaurant was hailed by Esquire Magazine as one of America's Best New Restaurants in 1992, calling Nyep’s food “absolutely delicious and enlightening.”

We'll also hear from Gérard Lopez, who is the charismatic chef/owner of the Cambridge location. He was born in Capestang, a small town in the south of France. He learned Spanish dishes from his father, a native of Madrid, and Algerian food from his mother, a French woman raised in North Africa. According to the website, "He brings to his kitchen the passion of a Spaniard, the sensibilities of a Frenchman and an international palate." (Yum.) According to his colleagues at the restaurant, he's a much-beloved live wire.

We're also honored to have Stephanie Scott and Yashvinee Narechania joing us for the evening from Room to Read headquarters in San Francisco.

If these wonderful speakers aren't enough to get you out the door, perhaps our silent auction items will tempt you. We'll be offering the following and more:

• Tickets to a Red Sox/Yankees game (date TBD)
• Dinner gift certificates to Elephant Walk
• Cooking classes at Elephant Walk
• Accommodations for a weekend in Provincetown
• Wine tasking with Stonehenge Winery
• Tickets to the ICA and Children's Museum
• Photo sitting for a family portrait
• Dinner for two at Grill 23
• Accommodations for a weekend at Naswa Resort, Laonica, NH

Buy your tickets in advance for $25 at this link; $30 at the door.

Robin Young Interviews Room to Read's John Wood

Ah...PR nirvana: the intersection of one of my favorite radio personalities (Robin Young from WBUR's Here and Now) and one of my favorite social entrepreneurs, John Wood, CEO of Room to Read. (You can read more about John here and here.)

I confess to being a WBUR junkie. On non-work days, I can easily listen to WBUR 10 hours a day as I roam about the house, run errands or putter in the garden. We staff the phones a few times a year when they're doing a fundraiser, so I've toured the station, and met a few of the folks who work there. Suffice it to say I could do one of those testimonials about why it's the most intelligent programming going.

So when I learned that John Wood would be in Boston in June, I started on a quest to secure interest with one of Robin Young's producers, having had luck with her show, "Here and Now," in the past. One of the nice reporters on the news side led me to a different producer this time, and I summed up John's compelling story, which more or less sells itself.

It's so fascinating to watch Robin conduct an interview, asking just the right follow-on questions to draw out her subject. And what is it about her voice? It's got the velvet of an aged cabernet, with just a bit of pepper at the right moments. (I asked my husband how he'd describe Robin Young's voice and he said: "At the risk of getting myself in trouble, it's sexy.") In a Boston Magazine article on "The 61 Best Things about Boston," the writer sums her up as "one of Boston's savviest and most likable journalists."

So imagine that perfect combination of this stellar interviewer with one of the most notable social entrepreneurs of our generation. Or better yet, don't imagine it - just listen here.

John Wood Still Rocks: Room to Read Founder Fires Up MIT Event

I first saw John Wood present in 2006, when he visited Boston on book tour for Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Two years later, he's still just as impassioned about the nonprofit that he leads, Room to Read.

Wood delivered the education keynote this past Saturday at the Millennium Campus Conference, which was sponsored by MIT's Global Poverty Initiative (GPI). The GPI was formed by a group of 40 MIT students determined to mobilize the world's next generation of leaders to act against global poverty. It gives you hope for Gen Y.

Wood was in outstanding company, with John Edwards opening the conference on Friday, and luminaries like Dr. Paul Farmer (Partners in Health) presenting the health keynote, and Ira Magaziner of the Clinton Global Initiative speaking for the public policy track.

Wood hit a nerve with Sox fans in his opening, speaking reverently of Dr. Farmer but noting that it was a bit like following Alex Rodriguez in the batting order. When the Boston crowd grumbled (with a few "ORTIZ" shout outs) Wood caught on to the faux pas and shifted gears to a music analogy, citing Bono. He later noted that he'd spoken at the recent Public Library Association Conference, where he followed the comedienne Paula Poundstone. "I have a tendency to do keynotes behind people who are smarter or better looking that I am, sometimes both."

Given the serious nature of his topic, John's presentation was consistently funny. He joked that leaving Microsoft to do good has become such a trend that Gates is following in his footsteps. Zack the yak, featured on the cover of Leaving Microsoft loaded with books, sported a design flaw; his rope was shorter than his horns, "evidence that the Microsoft design team had gotten there before me."

On a more serious note, Wood applauded the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, noting that Warren Buffet's follow-on support of the foundation raised the bar for billionaires everywhere. "These guys have stepped up. What are you doing?"

The grand challenges, according to Wood:

• Every child, everywhere, deserves a chance at education.
• 110 million kids of primary school age are not enrolled in school. If you lined those kids up side-by-side, they would form a line stretching from the East Coast of the U.S., across the country, across the Pacific, through Asia and on to London -- 21,000 miles long. What an image.
• 800 million people cannot read or write; two-thirds of these people are women.

Room to Read’s Challenge Grant Model is part of its secret sauce. On top of demonstrating need and dependability, RtR requires the school community to co-invest, which gives communities a greater stake in the outcome. For libraries, for example, communities might provide materials and labor to aid in construction.

The Local Language Publishing Program is another cornerstone RtR program. In 2003, survey work in Nepal revealed that more kids would use their library more often if books were in Nepalese, rather than English. So Room to Read found local authors and illustrators, publishing 10 local language books in 2003. By now, the organization has published 225 localized books.

Girls who are beneficiaries of Room to Read’s Girls’ Scholarship Program have even gotten into the act, writing one of the books in the series, “Baby Fish Goes to School.” It’s the story of a fish who wants to go to school with the other animals, but his mother explains that he can’t because he lives in the water, and the school is on land. So the animals get a fishbowl so that the fish can join them at the school. How great is that?

Wood noted that he told the story when he spoke before the Clinton Global Initiative last September. He looked out in the audience to find that he’d brought Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison to tears.

He gives one heck of a presentation.

For the backstory, you can read Wood’s recent essay from Newsweek, or better yet, read his book.