Changing lives book by book is the African Library Project’s tagline.  But do you ever wonder exactly how ALP libraries change lives? 

What follows is a thank you letter from the teacher-librarian at Middlepits Primary School in Middlepits, Botswana in which she explains the impact of the ALP library at her school. 

This thank you letter tells the story.

Dear ALP,

Our school has been struggling in the past years and producing extremely below average grades. Shortage of learning resources, such as books, was then identified as one of the major causes of such a painful experience.  Since the birth of our school in 1987, achieving quality performance has been an uphill challenge, which is clearly indicated by the school performance in the Primary School Leaving Examination results.

There has been tremendous, notable improvement since we received a library from you.  After the establishment of a library in our school, good results have been coming, miraculously, which has made everybody happy in our locality, including students, teachers, parents and all other stakeholders.  For the first time in 2013, the school managed to achieve a pass rate of 76% [in the national exam], followed by 84% in 2014, 86% in 2015, 77% in 2016.

We, therefore, strongly believe the good results are being achieved because of the books that you kindly donated to our school.  Let me take this opportunity to express our delight with a great smile and a heart full of happiness to you for bringing light to our school in the toughest times of need.  We are now a proud organization with a reputable reading culture, and we are ranked among high achievers in our region because of you.

May you extend the good gesture to others and may God bless you.

Yours sincerely,

Caiphus Merapelo Kitso, Teacher-Librarian

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