The Kalima School Reading Club programme at the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) is pressing ahead with its 2026 cultural and knowledge agenda, in collaboration with the Emirates Schools Establishment (ESE), with an aim to double the number of Abu Dhabi school students who benefit from its activities.

This forms part of the club's efforts, during the second phase of the Community Campaign to Promote Sustainable Reading, to encourage a culture of reading among students and transform it into a sustainable practice, coinciding with the UAE’s declaration of 2026 as the ‘Year of Family’.

The Club’s phased operational plan targets 40 schools in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, gradually expanding to cover most schools across the Emirate in order to achieve the desired social impact and strengthen the presence of reading in both educational and family environments.

The programme is one of the executive arms of the Community Campaign to Promote Sustainable Reading, driven by the belief that sustainable reading begins at school, extends to the family, and helps build a supportive knowledge environment for children, strengthening their connection to the Arabic language, and developing their cultural and intellectual awareness at an early age.

The ALC continues to implement the programme in line with its commitment to supporting the National Policy for Reading, and contributing to the UAE’s vision of preparing generations with the skills of the future, as outlined in the UAE Centennial Plan 2071 and its objective to build a knowledge-based economy. Through its programmes and activities, the Club empowers students with tools for critical thinking and constructive dialogue, while reinforcing Arabic as a language of science, creativity, and innovation.

Since its launch, the programme has seen remarkable engagement from students in the schools where the first meetings took place. They participated in panel discussions and interactive activities centred on a selection of publications from the Kalima Project for Translation. These activities focused on developing comprehension and analytical skills, expanding knowledge, and establishing an educational model that restores the vital role books play as a tool for creativity and learning.

In an effort to enhance the reading experience, the programme relies on carefully selected texts that consider age and cognitive differences among students, providing them with content appropriate to their abilities. This approach fosters better comprehension and turns reading into a positive and stimulating experience, supporting the Community Campaign’s goal to establish reading as a sustainable habit in the family and broader society.

This initiative forms part of an integrated ecosystem led by the ALC, which includes BAREC (Balanced Arabic Readability Evaluation Corpus), the first Arab project dedicated to determining readability levels in Arabic texts according to age groups. BAREC is based on a vast linguistic corpus of more than 10 million words covering a wide spectrum of literary genres, topics, and source countries, supported by artificial intelligence (AI) tools capable of automatically measuring text difficulty.

The project aims to support guided reading for children and young adults by enabling authors and publishers – particularly in children’s literature – to accurately determine reading levels, while also helping teachers and families select appropriate materials for each age group. Additionally, BAREC supports scientific research in Arabic computational linguistics and provides an open-source linguistic corpus for linguists and data scientists.

The BAREC project is implemented as a collaboration between the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, New York University Abu Dhabi, and Zayed University, reflecting a deep integration of cultural, academic, and technological capabilities to promote the Arabic language and its standing in the contemporary digital and knowledge landscape.

The Kalima School Reading Club is set to continue implementing its plan throughout the year, with a vision to reach students across Abu Dhabi schools, providing quality content that enriches linguistic competence, supports research and language activities, and contributes to generating an active cultural movement in the education field. This aligns with the wise leadership’s aspirations to build an integrated knowledge-driven society where reading is a central pillar of the UAE’s educational and cultural development journey.