UNESCO - Kitâb fi Jarîda

The idea behind Kitâb fî Jarîda (‘a book in a newspaper’) is to give a wider range of people free access to knowledge and learning through the selection of a book from various intellectual fields, re-editing the content and cover in collaboration with an artist from the Arab world, and distributing it in a Tabloid form (32-40 pages) as an addendum in the most read daily newspapers in the Arab region.

Objectives

• To make literature freely available to individuals and households, particularly those who lack the financial means to buy books.
• To enable Arabs in different cities and countries across the region to share the same texts simultaneously, thereby creating in international literary community.
• To encourage familiarity with Arabic contemporary art through the use of images by leading artists.
• To increase cultural awareness and literacy in Arab countries.
• To increase cultural and scientific interaction between the various parts of the Arab World through recognition of a common heritage.
• To increase the recognition of quality writers and artists from the Arab world through the wide publication and distribution of their work.
• To encourage a new generation of learners and readers to seek knowledge for its own sake, and for the sake of civilization and humanity.

Achievements to date

For the past ten years more than eighty books of traditional and contemporary Arabic masterpieces have been edited and distributed via a network of more than twenty daily newspapers in the Arab world. This amounts to an average of about three million copies of each book, giving a total free distribution in the whole region of two hundred and fifty million books (250,000,000).  This accomplishment was noted by UNESCO in its 170th Executive Board.