Our Guiding Principles

• Partnership. We create vital partnerships between organizers of book drives and African communities.
• Community involvement. We proudly rely on local, grass-roots participation to collect, sort, pack and ship books from North America and to set up, promote and run libraries in Africa.
• Volunteerism. We rely on a network of talented volunteers who contribute with heart and keep our operations affordable.
• Efficiency. We make it easy for anyone to collect and ship books, so that people with limited resources can still have a huge impact.
• Sustainability. We don’t just ship books.  We provide systems, support and follow-up to make sure our libraries succeed.
• Cultural fit. We send books with universal appeal or with specific relevance to Africa.
• Learning for all. We educate our book drive volunteers, especially schoolchildren, about current conditions in Africa.
• Environmental impact.  We recycle gently used English language books to help meet the urgent shortage of books in Africa. Many of these books would otherwise end up in landfills.

December, 2012