Business
Tom Stader is the founder of The Library Project (TLP), an international non-profit organisation started in 2008 that donates libraries and provides teacher training to rural elementary schools, orphanages and community centres around China and Vietnam. Originally from the US, Tom relocated to China fifteen years ago and initially worked as a teacher for six months; this experience exposed him to the difficulty of teaching without the correct tools, and inspired him to make a change. Fast-forward 13 years and The Library Project has help over 1 million children, worked with 3000 schools and is registered for compliance in five regions around the world. In this insightful conversation, Tom and Adam discuss the value of both the local and expat community in assisting non-profit organisations such as The Library Project, as well as talking about the vast range of companies that have helped and contributed to the project since its conception. Tom also sheds light on the decade long partnership of TLP with its first major corporate donor, and how the sharing of photos and stories on the company’s intranet helped grow their involvement and led to the first large scale contribution to the organisation. The conversation then turns to the future aims of TLP, and Tom expresses his goals of improving the quality of the content in the libraries, looking for ways to bring teacher training into smaller rural schools, and ultimately help as many children as possible.