A Vietnamese man has been awarded a UNESCO prize for his efforts to bring books to rural areas across Vietnam over the past nine years.

Nguyen Quang Thach, 41, will receive the 2016 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize for his programme on September 8 in Paris. Thach is one of only two people in the world winning the prize this year. Besides the prize, Thach will get a cash amount of around USD20,000 from UNESCO.

Nguyen Quang Thach has been awarded the 2016 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize

The UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize was launched in 1989.

Thach, who spent 19 years studying library design and applying library models, started his work in 2007 with three libraries in his family.

After giving up his job, in 2010, he conducted the first trans-Vietnam walk to raise funds and awareness for the library revolution programme in rural areas. In addition to the establishment of libraries, the programme also provides hands-on training and collaborative teamwork to operate the libraries and create activities to encourage reading.

To date, his programme has made books accessible to more than 400,000 readers in rural areas and built more than 9,000 libraries in 26 provinces.

With the support of the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and engagement of a million people, rural people and Vietnamese overseas, Thach hopes that the programme will be replicated nationwide to cover all 63 provinces reaching around 20,000,000 rural people by 2020.

Thach has also introduced his programme to education experts in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and India. He said he hoped that children in developing countries will have more chances to read books. He plans a walk in India to call on building book libraries for poor children.