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African Library Project to Expand into Kenya!

Help Us Stock the First 30 Libraries

As a high school teacher in rural Kenya, Deborah Lustig, African Library Project Board Chair, was sad to see that most of her students had no textbooks. Once she had started a library at her school, the students were eager to get in and read.  "Ever since I joined the ALP board, I have been hoping we could expand into Kenya," she said.

Soon Deborah's hope will become a reality.  ALP has agreed to partner with Rongo University College and Project Humanity to create 30 community and school libraries in the southwestern Kenyan communities of Migori and Homabay Counties.  The first book drives to fill these libraries will take place in 2016, and the libraries will open in 2017.

Like the entire ALP board, Deborah is enthusiastic about the expansion, "I am thrilled that so many students are going to have access to books as a result of this partnership."

The two counties that will be served have over 500 primary schools. Very few of the schools are stocked with textbooks and even fewer have libraries or books to read aside from textbooks.  The population in these counties has high level of poverty, persistently high dropout rates in school and a high prevalence of HIV.  Children, youth and women form a majority of the population, and they are most impacted by these problems.

"We are hoping that by working with the African Library Project, we can begin to address some of these problems," says Samuel Gudu, Principal at Rongo University College.  "Through the establishment of community and school libraries, we are hoping students will take an interest in reading and be more motivated to stay in school.  Our goal is also to provide women with learning opportunities that will help them to become business owners with the potential for greater financial freedom."

According to Isabelle Mussard, CEO of the African Library Project, "ALP is delighted to begin working in Kenya, and we have been impressed by Rongo University College and Project Humanity's commitment to creating and sustaining libraries.  The first important step is to begin the process of organizing book drives to collect books for the new libraries."  Book drives for the Kenyan libraries need to be completed by December 12, 2016, Kenya's Independence Day.  A terrific way to celebrate!

"Organizing a book drive is surprisingly easy and enormously rewarding," says Isabelle.  "In Kenya, as in all communities where it creates libraries, ALP could not bring books to African students without the dedication and creativity of book drive organizers."

Volunteers Find Time in Unexpected Places

Contributed by Amy Gill, busy mother and Book Drive Organizer

New York City--Last summer I started thinking about finding a charity that would be a way to teach our children the importance of helping others.  Organizing a book drive for Lesotho seemed like a good fit for our family, but I worried that the project was too big for us.  My concern? Where to find the time to do this?

As for many families, there isn't a whole lot of extra time to devote to needs that aren't immediate.  I knew we didn't have the time to take this on by ourselves.  Then I found a willing collaborator in my son's classroom teacher.  The teacher and I both understood that neither of us had a lot of extra time but we could do it.

What I guessed and hoped would happen, did happen.   Though no one really thought they had extra time, we still pulled it off.  Our "meetings" to organize the drives, the storage, the requests, the fundraising, were all done in a couple moments prior to class or at another school event.  It goes to show what lots of others already knew: that while I could've taken lots of time with fancy posters, meetings, and detailed scheduling, it could also be done within the slimmest window of time and on a shoestring of resources.

As it turned out, we were not alone. Other people stepped up to help as well. A parent I had only recently met volunteered to get kids involved by making cookies for a bake sale to raise funds for shipping.  Another parent designed signs, another volunteered to drive the boxes to the post office.  My husband got the supplies, and our kids helped select books from our shelves to give away.  Throughout the year parents and kids dropped off books before school.  Once the book drive was completed, parents and kids gathered in one classroom to sort and place all the books into boxes and label them.  A third grader in my son's classroom donated $80 from her own savings to the fund.  This blew me away.

I was grateful to all who accepted the project and volunteered to participate in ways they were comfortable with.  It did prove what I hoped to be true: if you can find even a little bit of time to start something that involves others, the rest really does fall into place.

Making the World Literate, One Librarian at a Time
James Reindl is a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer serving with his wife Grace in the Volta Region of Ghana.  The Reindls have lived in Ghana since October 2014 and are in charge of PC-Ghana's book distribution project called Ghana Get Some Books.  Read James' story about how ALP inspires Ghanaian teacher-librarians.
On June 8, our 6th container to Ghana was loaded from the warehouse and trucked to the Port of New Orleans with the books for 59 libraries carefully packed inside. This amazing feat is thanks to the efforts of the book drive organizers and their supportive teams and communities in WA, NC, CA, CO NY, MD, MA, GA, IL, VA, NJ, OH, AK, FL, PA, TX, NH, ID and AZ. The container will travel the Atlantic on the Maersk Kobe.

Want to be a part of this?  
Kenya and Botswana urgently need your help.  Sign up to do a book drive today!
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