February 20th, 2008
Inspired by Doris: an idea… and lots of questions
Back in December, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Doris Lessing recalled visiting a friend in Zimbabwe who was working as a teacher. The visit opened her eyes to a lot of things, including the dearth of books available in schools. The people she met had very little of anything, but they had a hunger for books. The school she visits has “no atlas or globe… no textbooks, no exercise books or Biros. In the library there are no books of the kind the pupils would like to read, but only tomes from American universities, hard even to lift, rejects from white libraries, detective stories, or titles like Weekend in Paris and Felicity Finds Love.”
“As I sit with my friend in his room, people shyly drop in, and everyone begs for books. ‘Please send us books when you get back to London,’ one man says. ‘They taught us to read but we have no books.’ Everybody I met, everyone, begged for books.
I was really struck by those words.
In the same speech, Lessing says that she belongs to organisation “which started out with the intention of getting books into the villages.” She doesn’t mention it by name, but I think it might be Friends of African Libraries. Is there an Irish affiliated branch of this? Or are there any organisations in Ireland who are endeavouring to do something similar. I know that Books For Africa do this in the US, but what about Ireland? To do this, would you have to have the involvement of a charity or Aid organisation or could it be done outside of that?
Food and medicine are obviously paramount for charities and Aid groups so I’m guessing, it wouldn’t be a high priority for a charity to ship a container full of books. But if funds were raised independently to cover the container costs and shipping, would a charity help with distribution once the books had arrived in Africa? How much does it cost to rent a container and ship it to Africa? How much would have to be raised? How would the logistics work? Where could the books be stored before shipping?
What I really want to know is if it’s feasible to organise a container, fill it full of books and get it to the very villages Lessing speaks about. It would involved asking readers, publishers, book journalists, book shop people to rummage around and find a pile of books they no longer read. I know I have a huge chunk of books I’d be happy to part with and am wondering if this is something that could be done. A container can hold 35,000 books, and if it’s possible to pin down a figure of how much money is needed to cover the total cost, why wouldn’t it be possible to raise that money? It’s the logistics, storage, admin and manpower that are the real encumbrants. This charity in America seems to have it down pat. Also, are there any bloggers who work for a charity or an Aid organisation? Has anyone in publishing (Eoin perhaps) who has experience of a project like this?
If anyone has any information or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Wasn’t there someone from a charity in touch with bloggers last year about that Trocaire ad? They might be good place to start.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:17 am
What a great blog and what a great idea. Zimbabwe’s cities used to have incredible little municipal libraries. These libraries don’t function any more for a variety of reasons which include lack of money to pay for resources (salaries, utilities etc), lack of new books and also theft. I note that you’re interested in rural villages in particular but our cities house hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who would benefit so much from being able to access literature. Some of the issues that would need to be addressed would be fostering a culture of respect for the library system (ie good care and timeous return of the books) and how to make the libraries self sustaining. Trocaire does already offer support in Zimbabwe and I’m sure that various embassies would also help with this idea so long as there was an implementor in Zimbabwe and that there was some sort of sustainability factor involved.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:11 am
To be honest I wasn’t even sure they spoke English there.
But it is a great project. Getting the books would be fun. You could go all high profile and go on the late late show to get viewers to donate books. Joe Duffy and Jerry Ryan might get on board. Ryan Tubbardy is a bookish lad, the idea won’t be lost on him. There is no shortage of spare books on this island and no shortage of good will either. We take too much for granted here.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I spoke to a colleague of mine about this, who has previously lived in Lagos and worked for an NGO there. Her perspective on it was quite interesting. She said that a scheme like this was implemented before, with books being sent from Ireland to Nigeria, but that the quality and content were often so poor thet they were often at best useless and at worst offensive(due to cultural differences) to the people they were intended for. Which is quite similar to the point Doris Lessing makes about the libraries. (She also said a large quantity of books ‘as gaeilge’ were sent?!)
I think this is an amazing idea though, and don’t mean to rain on the parade here at all!
February 20th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
hey sinead,
i’m doing a bit of part time work with a charity in the UK (if that’s any use) whose efforts are to raise money to build schools and provide book for African countries
Give me a shout if you want me to pass on any information
Leigh
February 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Hi Sinead -
An IBBY conference a few years ago in Cape Town focused on publishing books in Africa for Africa and how to supply young people with books to read.
Also CBI/NLT ran a successful bookdrive at the end of last year - I’m sure that they would be happy to let you in on the logistics they used to get the project running.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
(I tried to get the links to work but failed - sorry for the second comment)
http://www.ibby.org/index.php?id=598
http://www.starbucksbookdrive.com/index.html
February 21st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
This is such a brilliant idea Sinead! I’m def in, and i have tons of books, i’m always trying to lend them to people once i’ve read them. This is a much better way of doing it.
I even meant to do that leave a book on the bus thing, but i don’t ever seem to get the bus these days.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Wonderful idea Sinead. I’ll help in whatever way I can and have plenty of books to donate too.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Firstly thank you to all the people who emailed and got in touch via Facebook. I’ve got loads of great suggestions and avenues to explore.
Aine, I’m beginning to think that going with a charity is the way to go.
Bev, I’d love to help villages AND cities and it sounds as though (from what you’re saying) there might be some infrastructural issues eg with libraries. If they books went to schools, would this be less of an issue? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Liam, eek - I think that once this kind of project was up and running, getting publicity would be no problem.
Martina, good thinking. There’s a link in this post about an America organisation that sorts and packs books rather than sending off the equivalent of the random stuff people toss into those ubiquitous plastic bags that get shoved through your letterbox. Lots of the stuff I’d be happy to part with his quality fiction, non-fiction and biography.
Leigh, thank you, I will be in touch if this gets legs.
David, cheers for the links, will have a read and take some notes.
Raptureponies and Edel, thank you. I’ll come a-hunting for those books if this is a runner.
Thank you all again!
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:09 am
If I were to think of doing something like this, I might begin by getting in touch with some people who have lived or are living in the areas you’re thinking of sending books to and asking them about their needs. Given the people you would be targetting would need to be English speaking and fairly well educated, you’d be looking at sending them to Universities and libraries I guess.
Then I’d find out what it costs to ship the books to wherever you’re thinking of and decide if you think that is the best way the money can be spent. You might find that for what it would cost to ship the books, you might prefer to supply a school with textbooks.
Alternatively, you could think of selling the books second-hand within Ireland and putting the profits plus what you were going to spend on shipping into a fund to allow schools or libraries buy books they need. This way, people get the value of the books, the money that would have gone to a shipping company and are able to buy books which might be more suitable for their needs.
Thats my initial thoughts anyway.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hi Sinead,
In terms of distribution, you’ll need to hook up with a local NGO or possibly a government department (although that could be a long, torturous route). In terms of efficiency, the best thing you could probably do is find international NGO’s which already have a supply chain in place, people on the ground who know where the demand is (e.g. city libraries versus rural schools) and a local distribution network. Putting this kind of thing together yourself would be very difficult. Point in case being Romania - lots of trucks with goods for orphans went out from Ireland, but when the Irish aid people went to collect the containers from customs, they were frequently empty. Figuring out how to secure the supply chain is extremely difficult, so use an existing one if possible. Similarly, the NGO’s will be able to guide you as to what type of books are and are not valuable for the end users. Again, there have been several campaigns in Ireland where well-meaning people have filled convoys full of goods for aid or emergency relief, only to find out when they reached their destinations that they brought the wrong stuff.
NGO’s such as Care and Oxfam have women’s empowerment programs all over Africa, Asia and Latin America which may be of interest to you. Their programs teach literacy, numeracy and entrepreneurship. Alternatively there are pure literacy-focused programs run by several NGO’s. I’d suggest contacting them - they’ll have a pretty good idea of how you could best work and where in the supply chain they would come in (e.g. they may want books which have been quality checked by someone but not want money, or they may want whatever books you can get, delievered to Dublin port, in a container, with shipping already paid).
You only really need to set up a charity if you end up dealing with money. If you need to start collecting donations and paying shipping companies you need to make sure you’re compliant. One of the advantages of NGO status is that you don’t pay any tax. Also, you don’t tend to get audited in the way private sector operations do. However, if you work with an international NGO they can probably bring the financing under their existing financial and legal structures.
Good luck - excellent idea.
Stephen.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Hi Sinead
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I think high schools would be a great idea. However, if schools were the recipient then the selection of books would be quite important. I certainly know that high schools in poorer communities could really do with their libraries being boosted by donations. If you’d like I can go along to some of Zimbabwe’s municipal libraries and see how well they’re functioning because they would be excellent beneficiaries too. One thing to consider as well is starting a relationship, with say, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Education/Culture, to make sure that any books coming in are exempt from duty.
Best wishes,
Bev
http://www.kubatana.net