Six semi-truck loads of books are stacked up at a warehouse in St. Paul and heading all the way to Africa.
KSTP caught up with organizers for “Books for Africa” today.
The group collects books from schools, businesses and whoever is willing to donate, then sends them overseas.
Kids of all ages are learning to read English and apparently are happy to do it.
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s2873745.shtml
Student seeks books for Africa
Fonley spoke passionately about the 46 million children in Africa who have never set foot in a school building.
http://www.nhtrib.com/news/article_bc404104-4571-11e2-90c3-001a4bcf887a.html
Books For Africa (BFA) has been honored with a prestigious 2012 Top-Rated Award by GreatNonprofits, the leading provider of user reviews about nonprofit organizations.
The 2012 Top-Rated Nonprofit List was based on the large number of positive reviews that Books For Africa received – reviews written by volunteers, donors and clients. People such as Agnes Igoye posted their personal experiences with BFA. Agnes, a container captain sending books to Uganda, wrote, “What struck me most [about BFA] was the passion and dedicated efforts of the staff and board members towards their work-Ending the Book Famine in Africa!” BFA was one of a number of nonprofits honored throughout the country.
Being named to the 2012 Top-Rated List comes at an important time of the year, as donors look for causes to support during the holiday season.
"We are gratified by Books For Africa for its work,” said Perla Ni, CEO of GreatNonprofits, "They deserve to be discovered by more donors and volunteers who are looking for a great nonprofit to support."
Being on the Top-Rated list gives donors and volunteers more confidence that the group honored is a credible organization. The reviews by volunteers, clients and other donors show the on-the-ground results of this nonprofit. This award is a form of recognition by the community.
http://www.insightnews.com/lifestyle/9938-books-for-africa-honored-as-2012-top-rated-nonprofit-
Bol, his Madison friend Rick Brooks, and helpers run the project from a funky workshop with a weathered wood facade in an otherwise nondescript concrete industrial building outside Hudson, a riverside community of 12,000 about 20 miles east of downtown St. Paul, Minn. They build wooden book boxes in a variety of styles, ranging from basic to a miniature British-style phone booth, and offer them for sale on the group’s website, which also offers plans for building your own. Sizes vary. The essential traits are that they are eye-catching and protect the books from the weather.
Each little library invites passersby to “take a book, return a book.”
Educators in particular have seized on the potential of something so simple and self-sustaining.
In Minneapolis, school officials are aiming to put up about 100 in neighborhoods where many kids don’t have books at home. A box at district headquarters goes through 40 books a day, serving children whose parents come to register them and adults who come to prepare for high school equivalency tests.
“I absolutely love them,” said Melanie Sanco, the district’s point person on the effort. “It sparks the imagination. You see them around and you want one. ... They’re cute and adorable.” Kids who have books stay in school longer, she said.
Bol and Brooks, who runs outreach programs at the University of Wisconsin, see the potential for a lot more growth. At one point, they set a goal of 2,510 boxes — surpassing the number of public libraries built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. They passed that mark this summer.
The Rotary Club plans to use the book boxes in its literacy efforts in the west African nation of Ghana. Books for Africa, a Minnesota-based group that has sent over 27 million books to 48 countries since 1988, recently decided to ship books and little libraries to Ghana, too.
The groups are working with Antoinette Ashong, a pro-literacy activist and headmistress of a girls’ school in the capital of Accra. “I want to spread reading in Africa, which is a problem because in Africa it is very, very difficult to get books to read,” Ashong said in a Skype interview. She has already put up 45 boxes in poor neighborhoods.
Most of the nonprofit’s money comes from sale of pre-built little libraries, which cost from $250 to $600, and a $25 fee to register a library on the organization’s website. The AARP Foundation has also provided a $70,000 grant as part of a new program to provide book boxes for seniors and kids to read to them
South Yorkshire schools donate thousands of gifts to Africa
Published on Saturday 29 December 2012 06:09
SCHOOLS in South Yorkshire schools have donated hundreds of thousands of books, clothes, shoes and toys to children in The Gambia which have been shipped to Africa.
Les Hince, chairman of the Bramley and Wickersley branch of Lions International, a charity supporting communities across the world, loaded a 40ft container full of the gifts outside his pub in Wickersley in just two hours.
Les, manager of the Three Horseshoes pub in Rotherham, said: “We have been donating shoes and other essentials to schools in The Gambia for several years now.
“We are working closely with the education minister of education in The Gambia who has selected three of the 13 schools which will benefit from the shipment.”
The container is set to arrive in The Gambia on January 21, when Les and other volunteers, who also helped to load the container, will distribute the gifts to the schools.
Schools from across the region collected and donated 200,000 books, 150,000 shoes and hundreds of thousands of toys and clothes as gifts for the African children.
One generous benefactor also donated a Jeep to be sent to the schools.
Madam Buchanan hastened to remark that the books that are part of the larger consignment they shipped to The Gambia were provided by Books for Africa, supported by the Margaret Rivers Funds. She disclosed that the value of the total consignment is about US$240,000. "We have distributed to 40 destinations and the aim of the Books for Africa is to send a million books to The Gambia to improve literacy and reading culture," she further remarked.
The Better Community Association president went on to state that the project is large and far-reaching with the aim to set up libraries in different places, thus justifying their donation to the Observer's library. "There are many reasons for one to read; to be clever, to interpret words, learn new things, satisfy one's curiosity, answer questions and stimulate the minds and to speak the imagination," she explained,
Buchanan further stated that the aim of the Books for Africa is to end the book famine in Africa. She noted that the first distribution of the books took place in 2010 with the 7,500 books that set up the medical library at the Sulayman Junkung General Hospital in Bwiam.
Les, manager of the Three Horseshoes pub in Rotherham, said: “We have been donating shoes and other essentials to schools in The Gambia for several years now.
“We are working closely with the education minister of education in The Gambia who has selected three of the 13 schools which will benefit from the shipment.”
The container is set to arrive in The Gambia on January 21, when Les and other volunteers, who also helped to load the container, will distribute the gifts to the schools.
Schools from across the region collected and donated 200,000 books, 150,000 shoes and hundreds of thousands of toys and clothes as gifts for the African children.
One generous benefactor also donated a Jeep to be sent to the schools.
Madam Buchanan hastened to remark that the books that are part of the larger consignment they shipped to The Gambia were provided by Books for Africa, supported by the Margaret Rivers Funds. She disclosed that the value of the total consignment is about US$240,000. "We have distributed to 40 destinations and the aim of the Books for Africa is to send a million books to The Gambia to improve literacy and reading culture," she further remarked.
The Better Community Association president went on to state that the project is large and far-reaching with the aim to set up libraries in different places, thus justifying their donation to the Observer's library. "There are many reasons for one to read; to be clever, to interpret words, learn new things, satisfy one's curiosity, answer questions and stimulate the minds and to speak the imagination," she explained,
Buchanan further stated that the aim of the Books for Africa is to end the book famine in Africa. She noted that the first distribution of the books took place in 2010 with the 7,500 books that set up the medical library at the Sulayman Junkung General Hospital in Bwiam.
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