Mission

To promote social engagement through shared reading and discussion by connecting students from diverse cultures, cross sections of society and countries. To bring local interpretations of shared reading to a global discourse resulting in a powerful exchange of ideas.

Vision

To form social and empathic bridges among students across the globe and empower them to build a world,

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit...
-- Tagore

Awards

The Globe Reads (TGR) was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Pathfinder Award in 2019. The award is described as follows:
....reflects the imagery on the distinguished Phi Beta Kappa key, a hand pointing to the stars. It is given to those who “encourage others to seek new worlds to discover, pathways to explore, and untouched destinations to reach.” The people, businesses, and institutions honored do something to broaden peoples' interest in active intellectual accomplishment; they reach beyond ordinary routine, beyond the regular requirement of their lives and jobs, in order to break new intellectual ground and/or inspire others to do so.

May 2015, our very first session

The story behind The Globe Reads (TGR)

When my two boys were little, our house was filled with colorful books like Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and later imaginative ones like Arabian Nights, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Panchatantra Tales. Reading for pleasure was a value. As the boys outgrew these books, I would collect them and take them to a school dear to my heart, in Bengaluru, India. Books like this are expensive and not easily available in India. This habit continued for years. In 2014, we decided to formally send books to other schools serving students from severely disadvantaged sections of society. The family often talked about these schools and in one such conversation, we organically came upon the idea of a book discussion with the books that we had sent. The Globe Reads was now a glimmer in our eye.
-- Vandana Nandan