Kieran Roberts is Director of The No Barriers Foundation.

The No Barriers Foundation hires teachers and resources schools in numerous developing countries but it began with a simple book drive.

We know the importance of literacy and we wanted to start work on providing any child anywhere – regardless of geography or gender – with high quality, accessible texts.

Wherever we work, we know that local people know best. That’s why we only hire teachers local to the school we’re staffing. So when our teacher in Bangladesh requested dual-language books written in Bangla as well as English, we acted on it.

Working closely with teachers in Bangladesh, we have now produced two dual-language children’s books focussed around our main character Rima, a girl who is just beginning to embark on her schooling journey. In these first two books in what we intend to be an entire Rima series, we learn about her family and her first day at school.

These stories tie in closely with the local curriculum in Bangladesh and will be an invaluable resource in delivering that curriculum as well as providing an extra tool for those children reading in Bangla but not yet in English.

To cover the costs for printing and shipping the books to all our partner schools, as well as a small fee for the artists behind the stories, we need £2500. In time, these books will give the gift of reading to thousands of children in Bangladesh and other Bengali-speaking regions.

As a young charity, we rely on small donations for all of our work. We are therefore relying on your support to help us fund the publishing of these books.

The literacy rate in Bangladesh is 61.5%. This demands a radical change and you can help us put books in to the hands of some of these children who are missing out through no fault of their own.

For more information on our charity and how you can support us, visit nobarriersfoundation.org.