Photos have been removed from this issue because of a law in Kenya requiring strict documentation for photos and videos featuring school children.
Greetings! Here is the February 2022 issue of the Libraries For Kids, Int'l monthly e-newsletter. OK, I'm late this month but February has been an exciting and busy month.
500 More Schools
Two more containers holding 92,000 books arrived in Mombasa on February 27 and they are in the process of being cleared through Customs. The books in these containers will create libraries in approximately 500 more schools impacting approximately 56,000 children
More Containers on the Way
Two more containers are scheduled to ship in May and then five more in December. These will put us about half way to the goal of supplying books to all 6,700+ rural schools in Kenya (1.5 million children). in addition to the 1,600 schools (360,000 children) that have already received books.
Getting Books Distributed
Receiving , processing and distributing books is no easy task. When the containers arrive the boxes are unloaded and every single books is stamped in several places "Libraries For Kids - Not for Sale." This is a very manual process and takes a team of people to stamp that many books as you can see in the above picture.
The books are sorted by subject and grade level and reboxed. We focus on one county at a time. Keep in mind that Kenya is almost as big as Texas. The books are taken by truck to a central location in a county. The next county on our radar is West Pokot in the far North West part of Kenya. It may take a week to get all the books delivered so they are stored temporarily in that county. These schools are very remote so often the only way to get books to them is to use motorcycles. Sometimes even the motorcycles can't get to the school so boxes are hand carried.
Our Operations Coordinator in Kenya, Wanjiku Francis, aka "Ciku" has done an amazing job and overcome daunting challenges to get books delivered. When Ciku was asked why she is so dedicated to Libraries For Kids, Int'l she said "When I was in school there were 30-40 kids in a class but we only had one text book for each subject so we had to share that book. I will do anything I can to improve that situation."
Delivery
When the books are finally delivered the kids are thrilled and dive right in. As one boy, Branmuu, told me, the books have opened up the world to him. Now he can see beyond just his rural village.
