Dear Friends,

It’s amazing. We are now celebrating our first five years and 561 libraries! Over 25,000 Americans have joined ALP to provide small libraries to serve half a million Africans in eight countries. Grassroots volunteers like you are the key to our collective success.

ALP has thrived during 2010 despite the economy. The Winston-Salem Symphony in NC kicked the year off with a book drive that filled a container to Botswana to start 48 primary school libraries! Book drives initiated by Penn State students alone produced 21 libraries. Altogether the dedicated, heroic efforts of our book drive organizers helped us start 223 libraries this year.

A big chunk of our achievement is due to our talented and passionate volunteers, donors and board members who contributed to make our first fancy fundraiser, Harambee!, a $63K success. The event was fun, heartful, and fabulous, and everyone glowed by the end of the evening.

I feel like a proud mother hen of our newly launched website. Please check it out, especially the new African Libraries section where you can learn about our fabulous partners. Visit the new Book Drives in Action section to get an up-close look at some of our book drives in progress right now.

We welcome this month our newest partner in Africa – the Michael Lapsley Foundation in Ghana. We will develop primary, secondary and community libraries together with this energetic nonprofit that matches our enthusiasm for the transformative power of books. Our African partners in Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and Malawi continue to be the key to our winning model of starting small, sustainable libraries in remote areas. We are so proud of them!

In gratitude,

Chris