News

May and June have been busy months for BFA. We hosted our first ever Harvard Club Breakfast for high level donors in the New York City area. Held in conjunction with Book Expo America and the United Nations, BFA big wigs mingled with other literary characters from around the world. While there, BFA Executive Director, Patrick Plonski, and Board secretary, Tammie Follett, presented our friends from Out of Print Clothing 9 http://outofprintclothing.com/) with the 2013 Books For Africa Award of Merit. Out of Print Clothing does more than make really hip shirts of the covers of our favorite books. They are one of the largest donors to Books For Africa! For every shirt they sell, they send one book to Africa. With their growing popularity, they have certainly sent a lot of books.

Books For Africa recently received our largest single donation ever! In May 2013, a generous donation of $600,000 was received from the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation of Nigeria. This gift will be used to send 1,000,000 books to students in countries across the Africa continent including: Nigeria, The Gambia, Somalia, Liberia, Tanzania, Namibia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Egypt, South Sudan, and Chad.

Books For Africa was honored to host His Excellency Ebrahim Rasool, Ambassador of South Africa to the United States, to join us as our keynote speaker for our annual fundraising events on May 15, 2013 in St. Paul, MN, USA. Representing one of the fastest growing economies in the world, His Excellency Rasool spoke of the importance of education and literacy in the rise of Africa.

For a man who made a living working with cars, Tom Warth, the founder of Books For Africa, sure does love to take walks. From April 26th-28th, 2013, Tom Warth and a contingency of BFA supporters took a hike from the University of Wisconsin Stout in Menomonie, Wisconsin, to the Books For Africa office in St Paul, Minnesota, a total distance of 68 miles. Each walker carried a college level book donated by the university on the first part of its journey to Africa.

“The Books have arrived! THANK YOU! And as expected, the kids are super excited-they had to get a day off from study because they just couldn’t concentrate in class. The big truck (which the children thought was a bus!) couldn’t pass through the school gate so we had to ferry the books with another smaller vehicle to one of the classrooms as we await distribution to all beneficiaries.” - Agnes Igoye, container captain for Chain of Hope Uganda project