A lifelong learner is first and foremost a lifelong reader. Lifelong Readers (LiRe) aims to provide school librarians, teachers, and administrators with guidance and tools for encouraging children of ages 6-12 to develop lifelong reading habits. The low level of young Europeans' literacy skills has been repeatedly documented, while EU bodies constantly stress the need for improvement. The EU emphasizes the need for lifelong learning, supporting numerous relevant projects. As both literacy and lifelong learning are closely related to reading, the project aspires to bring about positive change in both areas, through coordinated efforts and collaboration in the field of reading promotion at the European level.

The Lifelong Readers (LiRe) project aims:

1. To convince stakeholders about the need to devote more time and effort to reading promotion and to place reading for pleasure at the centre of their policies, approaches and practices.
2. To provide stakeholders with guidance, training, and an array of tools for reading promotion in the primary school.
3. To initiate change by implementing reading promotion programmes in all participating countries.

To achieve these aims, the LiRe project builds a reading promotion framework which features: (i) Summary descriptions of successful reading promotion programs; (ii) Principles, strategies and approaches for promoting the joy of reading, building reading communities, and sustaining reading cultures; (iii) An extensive collection of reading promotion actions, grouped under such categories such as Reading Promotion through Play/ ICT/ Volunteerism/ Awards/ the Arts; (iv) An annotated catalogue of relevant sources and resources; (v) Reading promotion evaluation tools. The LiRe Training Modules, will address the reading promotion training of teachers, school librarians, and administrators. The material will be piloted and implemented by all partners, and results will be widely disseminated.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
[Project Number: 518250-LLP-1-2011-1-CY-COMENIUS-CMP]