In September 2018, I boarded a plane for a five-week safari through five countries in East Africa. My goal was simple. I wanted to see the animals in the wild while they were still in the wild. To be honest, the cultural visits on the itinerary were not what interested me. In fact, I was a little apprehensive about them. Visiting homes, schools, villages, slums and meeting people whose lives were so different from my own was outside of my comfort zone. The animals were incredible, exactly as I had hoped. But what surprised me most was not the wildlife.
It was the people.
Everywhere I went, I met individuals who were warm, welcoming, creative, hardworking and full of hope. I discovered that some of the most meaningful moments of the trip had nothing to do with animals at all. They happened while sitting with families, talking to teachers and observing communities determined to create better lives for their children.
One visit changed my life forever.
We stopped at Amboseli Primary and Secondary School near Amboseli National Park in Kenya. There, I learned about the Maasai community that surrounded the school. Traditionally, the Maasai are nomadic herders, moving their sheep, goats and cattle to wherever grazing conditions are best. But because they wanted their children to receive an education, many families had altered a way of life that had been practiced for generations.
They established a more permanent settlement near the school so their children could attend classes regularly.
Think about that for a moment…
Education was so important to them that they changed how they lived, worked and cared for their livestock. Warriors often had to travel farther away with the herds, sometimes for weeks at a time. Families faced additional challenges and risks. Yet they made those sacrifices because they believed education could create a better future for their children.
As I walked through the school, I saw classrooms filled with students eager to learn despite limited resources. I saw determination. I saw hope. Then someone asked one simple question.
“Do you have a library?”
A teacher named Anna smiled and replied, “No, but we would love to have one!”
That was it. Just one sentence… I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
As we continued our journey, those words stayed with me. On the flight home, they stayed with me. Back in my daily life, they stayed with me. I kept asking myself the same question.
If a school wants a library, why can’t we help them create one? The idea seemed straightforward. Surely books could be collected, donated and shipped. Surely there had to be a way.
That’s when people started telling me all the reasons it couldn’t be done.
- Shipping would be too expensive….
- The logistics would be impossible…
- The books would never make it through customs…
- The challenges were endless…
But throughout my life, I’ve lived by a simple philosophy: “Focus on the objective, not the obstacle.”
Every worthwhile project comes with obstacles. If you focus only on the problems, you’ll never begin. If you focus on the objective, you can solve problems one at a time as they appear. So that’s what I did. We began learning. We found books. We figured out shipping. We built relationships. We navigated customs. We made mistakes. We learned from them. And little by little, what many people said couldn’t be done started becoming reality. Books arrived at the Port of Mombasa. Books were delivered to schools across Kenya. We learned how to reduce shipping costs. We helped schools receive books that supported their curriculum. Most importantly, we saw the excitement on the faces of children who suddenly had access to books they had never imagined reading. What started as a desire to help one school quickly became something much bigger than I ever envisioned.
Libraries For Kids International was born from a simple request: a teacher who wished her students had a library.
Today, that same mission continues to guide everything we do. Every school we impact, every book we place on a shelf, and every child we serve is rooted in that moment in Kenya when I realized that sometimes changing a child’s future begins with something as simple as providing access to a book. I never set out to start an international nonprofit. I simply met people who believed deeply in the power of education, saw children eager to learn and heard a teacher express a dream.
Once I heard that dream, I couldn’t walk away…
And neither could the thousands of supporters, volunteers, donors, educators and community leaders who have joined this journey since. Because when a child opens a book, they open a door to possibilities. And every child deserves that chance.
Coach Roy AustinFounder
