World Book Giving Day – We Need Your Help To Build Another Library…

Today is international Book Giving Day and we are ready to celebrate…

There are three easy ways to celebrate World Book Giving Day:

  • Give A Book to a Friend or a Relative…
  • Leave a Book In A Waiting Room…
  • Donate a Book…

And if you follow our blog you know that we like to love to read and sharing books is something we just can’t help doing!!! Last year for World Book Giving Day we presented a dream to our readers and together we created a library for a school in rural Lesotho. Book by book the library grew, packages sent and received from all over the world… It was an incredible project to be part of, we loved every second of it. And this year we are bringing another dream to our readers… We are hoping to build a new library for a school a little closer to home:

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Let me introduce the School:

Food 4 Thought

Food 4 Thought is a small pre-primary school outside the South Western Cape town of Stanford, it is run entirely by volunteers. About ten years ago a group of tenacious local women started this school for the Xhosa speaking children living in this severely poor community. Their dream was to provide the unsupervised and deprived young children in the area a chance to begin their educational journey with confidence and enthusiasm. It makes sense that a nuturing school foundation for the children could uplift their entire community. During term time the school looks after, educates and feeds fifty-five children from 7:30 to 4:00pm every day.

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Home in the community.

Since the school began three local woman from within the community have become credited pre-primary teachers and the headmistress has trained with budgeting, computer and governess skills. They have begun a school garden and employ a cook to prepare nutritious meals for the children. The school relies on the wider local community for their funding. Their resources are naturally very limited in a community with an extremely high rate of unemployment. Certainly most of the community would be unable to read and what a gift these young children who are being given such a refreshing start will be to their families both the older and future generations.

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The School’s 4ft vegetable garden.

While the school is doing a sterling job at raising a sector of the community, just providing the basics is a stretch of any budget. And certainly there is no change left over to stock a book nook, let alone a small library. I believe with the help of our readers we could build a library for this small school and make difference to the local community one book at a time… The plight of these children is sadly not unusual for many small towns in our region, but we believe by enabling one school, building book by book that we really could make a difference.

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So How Can You Help?

Step 1: Select a Book or Books…

  1. You can search through your books for gently used books that your children have outgrown or no longer love.
  2. You can buy a book or two with your children and package them up.
  3. You can shop at Amazon and ship directly.
  4. And you can shop on-line, locally at Kalahari, and ship directly as well.

The children are Xhosa speaking, English is there is their second language… but don’t let that hold you back. Any books will be great, story books, picture books… really any books. Also just because it is a pre-primary school doesn’t mean you can only send pre-primary level books. Really the school is a conduit into the community and books for older children will be a great way to engage the older children. Maybe books that the teachers might enjoy using with the children: craft books, song books, books with activities in them. If local readers would like to purchase Xhosa speaking books for the children that would be fabulous.

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Step 2: Contact us. You will need to contact us for the address to send the books you have chosen.

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Step 3: Let us Know All About the Books You Chose:

We would love if you could photograph the books you are sending, if you shop on-line then just send us a list of the books that you ordered. If you have a blog and write about it then let us know and we will have a Progress Post next week… on 21st February. I will pop the photo’s you send into the post and if you do have a blog there will be a chance for you to link up as well…

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We are so excited about this project and we really hope that our readers seize the day and join us… it doesn’t have to be huge… if even one percent of our readers pop a book into an envelope and post it off… we will have a library!!! So here’s to hoping that we hear from you all really soon… leave a comment saying you would like to join is, contact us… Share this post… whatever you need to do… And let us know what books you are sending we would so love to hear from you!!!

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Disclosure: The Amazon and Kalahari links are affiliate links and our blog will earn a very small percentage of the book sales made there, we pledge to put any of our earnings from books for the school directly back into buying more books for them… this is their project and we don’t in any way want to gain financially from it.

29 Replies to “World Book Giving Day – We Need Your Help To Build Another Library…”

  1. We would love to join in and will go hunting for some Xhosa books as soon as my little ones have recovered from some nasty bugs! What do people do with sick kids without books!!! Thanks so much for organising.

  2. It is thrilling to see our own village set to boost child literacy. We aim to move all our picture books on, now that our youngest is nine years old.

  3. A few years ago (like 5 or 6) I bought a xhosa children’s bible just because it was a really good price & I felt I should , I was sure there would be someone I could bless…. Somehow there just wasn’t & now we can bless a whole lot of little bodies!God obviously plans way ahead 🙂 thank you that we can take part!

  4. Do you think they would like some picture books from Australia? We have some books that we don’t ready much any more, but they are still good. It would be such a good feeling to send them to someone who would love them. – Izzy and Zoe (9) and Morgan (5)

  5. THank you so much “MOT short for Mother” I really can’t thank you enough for being involved in this project!!! Hope you have a great weekend!!!

  6. Zoe, I love how you always ask such good questions… I am going to post a list of Xhosa picture books as soon as I can… working on it!!! Have a great weekend!!!

  7. Kate Pickle… That is just so stunning, that your kids want to be involved… we would love to have their books on board and I will email you the address later on in the weekend!!!

  8. We would love to be part of this! Please send me the address for posting books to. Do you know of good places to buy Xhosa books? If not, I will just keep my eyes open for them.

  9. Hi Amy, thanks for everything, you have worked so hard on World Book Giving Day and I so appreciate it!!! The potential library is linked up and I am hoping folk will respond!!!

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