News

Join us in celebrating the importance of literacy in improving people’s lives across Africa. According to UNESCO, literacy remains an elusive target: some 776 million adults lack minimum literacy skills, which means that one in five adults is still not literate; 75 million children are out of school, and many more attend irregularly or drop out. Books For Africa believes in the power of literacy, and believes that books help people to acquire literacy skills and help themselves to improve their lives. Over the past 21 years, Books For Africa has engaged in literacy projects in 45 African countries. We have helped fill libraries with books, helped provide textbooks for schoolchildren, and helped university students to get the books they need to improve their educational opportunities. 50 cents sends a book to a child in Africa. Help out the children of Africa today in honor of International Literacy Day! Click on the link above for more info...

Soldiers assigned to the U.S. Army's 4-414th Civil Affairs Battalion delivered more than 1,000 books to two primary schools and a secondary school near Tanga, Tanzania, on August 24, 2009. The U.S. Embassy in Tanzania provided the books, which were donated by various entities including Books For Africa. According to U.S. Army Capt. Bernice Logan, it is common for a rural Tanzanian school of 1,300 children to have only 22 teachers, which equates to more than 59 students per classroom. "They are lucky if they get one book per classroom, and the teacher writes everything on the board and then they [students] copy that. Being able to provide these books allows the teacher the time to do more teaching instead of writing." Click on the link above for links to the full story and a slideshow.

South African students in the Cape Town area now have access to 22,000 BFA books thanks to help2read, a nonprofit that strives to ensure that all primary students are literate and love reading. According to help2read: "Now, 8,000 learners in 15 schools have access to beautiful and interesting books that will certainly provide enjoyment and an opportunity for learning. Not only have do the children have access to these books but they can, with the assistance of the trained reading helpers, now fully enjoy and appreciate these fantastic resources." Click on the headline to read the full report.

Miss Teen of America Carlene Miller recently volunteered to sort books at the BFA warehouse in Atlanta, then blogged about her experience: “Knowing that each one of those books, that would have ended up in a landfill, has the potential to completely change someone’s life made the entire experience so worthwhile and meaningful. It also helped that they had the best upbeat music playing in the background as we dug through our giant box of books from Brigham Young University. We emptied it completely, and it felt great!” Click on the headline for more info...

Students at the Catholic University of Sudan found a creative way to house their new BFA books: "We purchased a 40-foot sea container and had it remodeled and had shelves made and now it serves as a mini-provisional library. Saturday a group of students assisted in going through all the boxes . . . and re-sorted the books on the shelves so that now in most cases no more than two copies of any one book remain in the mini-library . . . and the rest are boxed and back in the first and smaller container. Students are excited about the situation . . . as a beginning!"

CNN recently posted a great story on their website about Books For Africa and the need for books in Africa. It includes quotes and photos from Andrea Wall of PEN Trust in Tanzania, a nonprofit that has distributed many BFA shipments. Click on the headline above for a link to the story.