By Taha Tariq on February 12, 2026

Taha Tariq

Taha Tariq is a sophomore at Dartmouth College studying Geography and Middle Eastern Studies with a minor in Human-Centred Design. A member of Ashoka UK’s Youth Changemaker Network, he is passionate about educational inequality, ranging from presenting research on T-Levels at Imperial College London to supporting campaigns on the importance of careers education with Teach First and Action for Race Equality. At Dartmouth, he is deeply involved in student advocacy as an elected Senator in Dartmouth Student Government and a member of the Student Advisory Board, where he works to ensure first-generation/low-income, international, and Muslim student needs are represented in campus decision-making. He is also a recent winner of the Great Initiative Award at Dartmouth, Vice-President of the Muslim Student Association, Co-Chair of the West-House Council and a photographer for the college newspaper, 'The Dartmouth.'  At Ashoka Arab World, Taha serves as a Fellowship and Venture Intern, supporting the search for new Fellows while also contributing to storytelling and communications that spotlight the work of Ashoka Fellows and partners across the region.

A Supernova You Can Hold in Your Hands

A Supernova You Can Hold in Your Hands

Supernova. It begins as something almost invisible, pressure building silently and energy gathering to a point until there’s a single moment that changes everything. Dr Rana Dajani (Ashoka Fellow, Jordan) uses that image to describe what happens when an idea uses people as catalysts rather than institutions. It “explodes,” she says, and “the light now is in every person around the world growing on its own.”

That’s the story of how Dr Rana’s initiative, We Love Reading (WLR), is now taking root in Egypt through an Ashoka Collaboration Grant, which connected WLR to Nawal Mostafa, founder of the Children of Female Prisoners Association (CFPA). Whilst at the surface it’s a project about adapting WLR for children connected to incarceration contexts, the reality is much deeper, centred on a method of nurturing agency. 

And this agency lives on as a light of changemaking within them, burning brighter as each reading ambassador actively shapes their community, one session at a time.
 

The Spark Inside the Story

“We Love Reading is not a program for literacy or mental health or leadership,” Dr Rana says, rather it’s a “program that fosters a sense of agency and responsibility.” That distinction is important as WLR is built on a practice of reading aloud for pleasure, which sounds simple enough, but the deeper mission is a mindset change of the readers from being passive observers to active participants in their communities.

WLR is like a “sugar that you can sprinkle,” complementing almost any mission. CFPA’s work supports children and mothers navigating stigma and reintegration as a result of the shadows of incarceration. WLR enhances this work by bringing in a mechanism that is accessible. For Nawal, childhood is a fundamental period where you can “cultivate every value” in order to get “very huge results.” In that lens, stories aren’t entertainment, but protection and a wellspring of confidence.
 

Two Fellows, One Shared Instinct

This collaboration began with recognition: Nawal admired WLR and aspired to bring it to Egypt, and Rana saw in CFPA a partner working in one of society’s most inaccessible spaces. “This is not something easy”, but “it’s profound,” Dr Rana says about Nawal’s work. There was a shared “desire and dream to change the world,” according to Nawal, and this is important as it changes the attitudes regarding how knowledge travels.

Rather than copying a programme step-by-step, the partnership focused on teaching a method that others can use and lead themselves. When that happens, the ‘changemaker’ stops being one exceptional person at the top of a hierarchy, but the role becomes more practical and accessible. This collaboration shows how, with the right tools, anyone, from the person who reads to one who gathers children, has the capacity to be a changemaker.
 

Egypt’s Reading Circles

So, how has WLR materialized in Egypt? Seven CFPA staff were trained and began facilitating reading sessions with 30 children. The key point with this model is that once one group is trained, a domino effect begins as the ambassadors bring it into their own neighborhoods and spread the word of WLR, resulting in more people being trained.

A Supernova You Can Hold in Your Hands 2

Nawal is cognizant of Egypt’s relationship with reading for pleasure, that it’s “not a basic habit.” So CFPA worked to make sessions inviting, often connecting reading to other activities children enjoy. The early signs were telling; children began asking when they would “have the second session?” Nawal fostered this passion by creating a “package” around children’s attention, from reading alongside drawing to changing the environment by reading in gardens and public spaces.

Essentially, a full day was created that children wanted to attend. This momentum was visible in a recent public activation at the Cairo Book Fair, where CFPA hosted 25 children, showing them around the different halls, and letting them meet publishers. Towards the evening, there was a reading session that then ended with a puppet show, and the enthusiasm was radiating from the children, and their engagement was a testament to WLR’s “supernova” logic that everyone can enjoy this shared community experience.
 

Scaling Without an Empire

WLR ambassadors now exist across 82 countries and is nearing 20 years since it began. Part of what makes that possible is a deliberate shift in how the model is shared. The training and materials are increasingly accessible in an open, “run with it” style. As Rana puts it, “anyone can be a WLR ambassador,” which signifies the importance of the idea being spread in a “decentralised fashion,” as it makes scale less about organisational expansion and more about how quickly communities can adopt a practice and make it their own.

This very openness is so powerful in Egypt because CFPA is not treating WLR as a standalone activity, but Nawal has taken this methodology and integrated it into the association’s wider work with children and caregivers, where the potential reach is vast. When a method becomes a part of daily programming, it can spread through the same trusted relationships that already exist within these communities, from staff and volunteers to mothers and young people, each passing the practice forward.

A supernova doesn’t stay in one place. It becomes the light in others.

Ashoka’s Collaboration Grant:

Ashoka’s Collaboration Grant is a small, flexible fund (up to $5,000) designed to help social entrepreneurs and Ashoka Fellows put their minds together to work on a short, practical collaboration that builds real capacity, not just a one-off activity. Teams are typically 2-4 people (with at least one Ashoka Fellow), must co-design and co-implement the work, and deliver it within 12 months. The grant can cover travel, research, training and producing shared outputs (e.g., reports, toolkits, etc.), with a focus on peer-to-peer learning, skills exchange and relationships that continue beyond the grant period.

Child care