Education by Donation: Books for Africa
- Mar 18, 2015
- 2 min read
"Books For Africa. A simple name for an organization with a simple mission. We collect, sort, ship, and distribute books to students of all ages in Africa. Our goal: to end the book famine in Africa." -Books for Africa
We dread waking up every morning to go to school, but kids in African countries would be lucky to have a school to go to in the first place. From since we can remember, we have been pushed to learn how to read, yet in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 63% of the country is literate. One can argue that there are no restrictions on the purchase of books, but that doesn't mean that everyone has the resources to purchase them for their schools and libraries. We preach about the benefits of online education and the unlimited amounts of information available on the internet, but many African countries would be lucky to even have electricity to power their homes. Organizations, particularly Books for Africa, are making education readily available through their book donations to schools and libraries in African countries.
Books for Africa, founded in 1988 by Tom Warth, is a nonprofit organization who aspires to donate books to African children. Warth's dream was sparked by a visit to an Ugandan library which lacked the most important feature of a library: books. Since then, he has been determined to collect unwanted books from American schools, libraries, and publishers and send them to Africa.
In Kenya, we were in a small village and the students had a wonderful school. They were eager to learn. They had motivated teachers, but they didn’t have any books in the school. They had no library. And so, imagine how proud I was to open up this box of shiny new encyclopedias and dictionaries from Books For Africa. They want more of your books. They can’t wait. They can’t get enough of these books.” — U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison (MN).
Like the congressman said, many of these African countries have kids who would love to learn, but don't have the resources to do so. Books for Africa makes it possible for African kids to finally learn and use their skills to teach others in their area.
Written by Eke Wokohca
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