Guest blogger, Bright Edem Kofi Adeti shares his experience with African Library Project and creating libraries for kids in Ghana.
My name is Bright Edem Kofi Adeti. I teach French and Information and Communication Technology in a deprived junior high school in the Volta Region of Ghana.
Listening to the students speak English leaves much to be desired. One would ask, “What good can come out of these students if they can’t construct a simple sentence?”
Yet, in the midst of all the uncertainties, discomfort and stress, there was one priceless thing, the lives of these innocent little children who deserved an education too.
I believe we must endeavor to be the reason why someone can go a step higher and draw a step closer to their dream. So, I decided to organize after-school reading class, using the only available reading material, “the school textbooks,” because the books in the school’s library are far above the students’ reading level.
There God listened to our prayers; books arrived from our hard working brothers and sisters in Tracy, CA, via African Library Project and with the help from Nneka Youth Foundation. The Foundation presented us these books on behalf of the African Library Project.
The books we received have had a lot of impact on these students. Come and see the joy when the books hit the shelves.
Academically, we are undefeated in the inter-circuit and inter-district Spelling Bee and Reading Competition for two years consistently. This has made my colleagues, other staff members, relentless in their effort for the students to be the best among equals.
This achievement is not without the people of Tracy, the African Library Project and Nneka Youth Foundation.
YES, ALP IS REALLY CHANGING 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