On Saturday, October 22, 2022, the US-based NGO African Library Project awarded its highest honor, the 2022 Compassion in Action Awards to Claire Hubel and Vaibhav Jayakumar. The announcement was made at the African Library Project’s Harambee! 2022, annual fundraiser event in San Francisco, CA.

 Claire Hubel

In her role as a Container Manager, Claire has helped 428 book drive organizers get their books to Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Lesotho, eSwatini and Kenya affecting nearly half a million readers.  She has personally done the book drives for 100+ libraries and manages the shipment of our health and science books.  A generous financial supporter, tireless and creative volunteer, Claire’s normal response is “I’ll do that!”  And she does.

 Vaibhav Jayakumar

Beginning at age 9, Vaibhav (now 15) and his family and friends have completed 10 book drives with creativity and leadership.  His fundraisers have included selling drinks and home-grown persimmons and creating  a “Run for Education”.  He coaxed 50 tomato plants to grow from seed to thank his book donors and organized 10 younger children to do micro book drives as training runs for their own book drives. Ever In pursuit of helping create more libraries, Vaibhav created an online community of book drive organizers, fundraised and blogged for ALP and has created a video.  Congratulations, young global leader!

For more information, please contact Chris Bradshaw at chris@africanlibraryproject.org.