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Kylie Knott

John Wood sees his life as a three-act play.
The first act includes his years as an executive at Microsoft before he left his perk-filled position as Greater China director of business development in 1999.
The American’s second act was his two decades at Room to Read, the charity he founded in 2000 that aims to end illiteracy and gender inequality, which was inspired by a trekking holiday he took in the foothills of the Nepal Himalayas.
Wood left Room to Read in 2021 and today is fully immersed in his third act, U-Go, a non-profit organisation he founded in 2022 that helps young women in low-income nations continue their education beyond secondary school.

Operating in nine countries – Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Tanzania – with plans to expand, the NGO is driven by the motto “Talent is Universal. Opportunity is Not.”
It has ambitious goals.
“Bold goals attract bold people, so our bold goal is 100,000 graduates by 2042, which is our 20-year anniversary,” says Wood, pulling up a chair at a cafe in Hong Kong’s Admiralty area.
U-Go fills a vital gap in the education space, Wood says. Low-income countries, he explains, have the lowest rates of university attainment, and the limited opportunities that exist are more likely to benefit men than women.
In low-income countries, less than two-thirds of girls complete their primary education, and only one in three completes lower secondary school, according to a World Bank study.
“Room to Read built a phenomenal escalator that took young people to a certain level,” says Wood of the charity that has raised over US$750 million, launched operations in 20 low-income countries, and positively affected more than 30 million students.
“But they got off that escalator and asked, where’s the next one that goes to university? And we did not, as an organisation, have an answer for them,” he says.
“We were often asked by the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers, what comes next? My granddaughter wants to be a nurse. My daughter wants to be a teacher. She’s bright, she’s hard-working. Can you help her go to university?”

U-Go was born to fill this void, with the charity currently helping 4,320 young women like Haway Dum, the youngest of nine children from a poor family in rural Cambodia. She is the first girl from her village to attend university, graduating with a degree in environmental science.
Most of the salary from her first job went to school fees for her younger siblings. Three of them went on to university studies in Japan, South Korea and Thailand.
Today, Haway lives in Cologne, in Germany, where she is working on a master’s degree focused on waste-water treatment, solid waste treatment and climate change. She also studies German.
Haway is an inspiration to girls in her community.
“They used to laugh at me. Now they want to be like me,” Haway says.


Then there is Tham, who grew up in poverty in rural Vietnam and was under great pressure to marry or work young to contribute to her family’s financial needs after the death of her father.
With the help of a U-Go scholarship, Tham graduated from a five-year pharmacy programme and lives independently in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.
U-Go has many inspiring stories like this, and Wood is quick to highlight that supporting the cause will not break the bank: the cost of sending a young woman to university under its programme is US$800 a year, he says.
“We’re not asking for US$80,000 to send a kid to Columbia University,” he says, citing a feasible annual cost for an international student to study and live at the Ivy League university in New York. “It’s US$800 to, say, send a young woman in Vietnam to go learn to be a veterinarian, a nurse, a doctor, a teacher.”
Wood was in Hong Kong this month to spearhead fundraising drives. Hong Kong is close to his heart: he lived in the city for eight years before moving back to the US in 2022.
“People in Hong Kong are very good at making money, but they’re also very generous – it was a very generous city for Room to Read and it’s been a very generous city for U-Go.”
It’s a matter of making time … I shut down my X account three years ago. I spend no more than five minutes a day on social media
John Wood
A powerful part of U-Go’s model, he adds, is zero leakage.
“When somebody gives US$800 to U-Go, 100 per cent of that money goes to the scholarship programme, with no administrative costs,” Wood says.
“U-Go’s success at fundraising is about building local boards in key geographies, empowering them, recruiting super-motivated business leaders to get involved, and not micromanaging them but simply giving them carte blanche to get out there and ‘GSD’.”
GSD is an acronym that pops up a lot in the conversation, standing for “Get S*** Done”.
It is a philosophy that helps Wood juggle so much: he has also published books, including Leaving Microsoft to Change the World and the children’s book Zak the Yak with Books on His Back, and reads about 50 books a year. His online activity, or rather lack of it, is also a factor.
“It’s a matter of making time … I shut down my X account three years ago. I spend no more than five minutes a day on social media.”
Wood, who hails from humble beginnings in small-town America, says his father’s university education paved the family’s path to the middle class.
“We weren’t rich but we weren’t poor – we were solidly middle class and that gave me access to a good public school, really dedicated teachers, a community library and a school library,” he says.
“My grandmother and mother were educated, and so was my older sister, so I’m the product of all these educated women. But this is not a women’s issue, it is a basic human rights issue, and the best gift we can give any girl or any boy in the world is to have them grow up with an educated mother who has a good job.”

The ripple effect of educated women, he adds, runs deep: they will enjoy higher status in their families and communities and have fewer and healthier children. They will also invest most of their income in their families.
While U-Go’s focus is scholarships that renew automatically until graduation – provided the student performs academically – the charity also provides “wraparound services” such as life-skills classes, mentorship opportunities, student meet-ups and connections to internships.
Emergency funding to prevent drop-outs is also part of the scheme. For many women in poor rural communities, Wood says, “incomes fluctuate, monsoons happen, flooding happens, the schools close, there’s a strike – it’s consistent inconsistency.
“Several scholars in the Philippines recently lost their homes because of typhoons but they are still standing – they still got up and went to school,” he says.
“We tell the scholars, ‘We’re going to be with you until the happy day you graduate as long as you do one thing and that is perform academically.’ It gives them confidence – we’re not going to let them down.”
For more details about U-Go, visit ugouniversity.org


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John Wood, founder of U-Go, a non-profit organisation that helps economically disadvantaged young women across the developing world attend university, at Hong Kong in November 2024. Photo: Kylie Knott


Haway Dum (second left), the youngest of nine children from a poor family in rural Cambodia, graduated from university with a degree in environmental science thanks to U-Go. She is now studying a master’s degree in Germany. Photo: U-Go

Wood distributes books carried on the back of yak in Nepal after a trip to the country changed his life. Photo: U-Go

Wood’s aim is for U-Go to have helped 100,000 graduates by 2042. Photo: Kylie Knott 

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Kimmel works on a drawing at her art studio. Photo: AP

Kimmel (right), who now helps other adoptees, and fellow adoptee Sarah Butcher examine Butcher’s adoption documents at Kimmel’s art studio. Photo: AP

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Teach4HK founder Arnold Chan, who was formerly an analyst at Goldman Sachs.

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Lifestyle

Family & Relationships

John Wood’s charity U-Go gives scholarships to help young women in low-income countries in Asia and Africa get a university education


John Wood’s charity U-Go gives scholarships to help young women in low-income countries in Asia and Africa get a university education.


Women and gender

Poverty