When Kirsten Gelsdorf’s global development students revealed their “shame” and “despair” about the state of the world — because, she said, their knowledge of humanitarian issues comes from doom scrolling on social media — the University of Virginia professor decided something had to change.
The result was Read for Action, a book club using “the power of fiction” to enable a global community of readers interested in humanitarian crises to view them through a different prism, one informed by developing relationships with well-rounded book characters.
Adrienne Ghaly, an assistant English professor at the University of Virginia, who helped create Read for Action, took up the tale in a discussion at Devex’s flagship event staged in Washington, D.C.