At the recent Summit in Botswana, Board Members and volunteers from the US saw firsthand that our libraries are thriving, and the teacher librarians have a great deal to teach each other and us.
Pictured here are the first-time Summit delegates Joel Wakesa from Rongo University and Abbas Swaleh from Project Humanity, who soaked up our best practices and contributed new ideas about how to create great rural libraries in Western Kenya.
When we visited eight ALP libraries, the entire school community turned out to welcome us with dancing, skits, reading demonstrations, tours of the library and songs about libraries and reading.
At the Summit, delegates from Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland made presentations about their unique approach, progress, and challenges in turning ALP books into vibrant libraries. We were delighted by all the achievements in library development, especially because many successes came from previous sharing of best practices with each other. We then worked on solving some of our toughest challenges, getting ideas from others who have solved the problem in a way we hadn’t imagined.
Ninety-seven teacher-librarians from all over Botswana joined us for three days of workshops and celebrations. The 38 international delegates collaborated to design and teach workshops on measuring impact, library management and creating a culture corner in the library. The highly interactive workshops offered a free flow of teaching and learning. The teacher librarians taught each other, and they taught us.
We left the Summit knowing that more libraries are needed and with the confidence that our partners in Africa will make sure that future libraries will also change lives, book by book.
Start Your Own Book Drive
Read our Book Drive Guidelines to learn all you need to know to collect, sort, pack and then mail your books to our warehouse, where they will be containerized for shipment to Africa. Your goal is to collect 1,000 appropriate books and approximately $500 for shipping and related costs. Double this and you can start two! Triple it and… you get the idea. To get ideas from other book drives — how they’ve collected their books and raised their funds.
We ship books all year round. Our typical calendar is:
- Ghana in February
- Botswana in March
- Malawi in June
- Kenya in July
- Uganda in August
- Lesotho in September
- Sierra Leone in October
- eSwatini (Swaziland) in November