NEWBERRY — As March winds down, elementary school children in Newberry County are busy collecting books that will be donated to the African Library Project, which puts books in the hands of youth who might not have a chance otherwise to read a book.
Danielle Rowe, executive director of Keep Newberry County Beautiful, said she chose the project because most books cannot be recycled due to the glue on the spine of the book.
“I was looking for different ways to do fundraising, but knew that there wasn’t much money to be made in books because people just find them electronically,” Rowe said. “Books cannot be recycled due to the glue on the spine of the book. I was looking for a way to upcycle instead of recycle.”
Rowe said “upcycling” is her term for finding another way to re-use something, instead of recycling and breaking it down.
“So since it isn’t easy to recycle books, we decided we would donate them,” she said. “We wanted to do this through the elementary schools in the county as a contest between each school.”
The book drive started March 1 and lasts through the end of the month. The winning school will receive a set of tablets for classroom use.
Rowe said the books will be shipped to California for processing then shipped to Africa to start libraries in Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The African Library Project promises to open up one library for every 1,000 books that are donated
Rowe says that this book drive will “give kids that aren’t provided books and resources the opportunity to learn.”
She said it is also important on a local basis to let students know that they can make an impact on a worldwide basis.
“It lets them know that they are fortunate to have the resources that they have,” she said.
Rowe also thinks the book drive will be “really good for the teachers also, because they are able to not only teach the kids in their classroom, but are able to benefit the children who are less fortunate.”
Types of books that can be donated include children’s books, photo books, dictionaries, paperback textbooks, encyclopedias, paperback fiction and non-fiction novels, books on health, agriculture, current events, early readers, thesauruses and juvenile literature.
Books that use a lot of slang, evangelize or promote just one particular religion, or are adult novels are also not accepted. Magazines are not accepted unless they are children’s educational magazines or current editions of National Geographic.
As of October 2015, the African Library Projected had completed 1,716 libraries in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Cameroon, Lesotho, Nigeria, Botswana, Swaziland, Malawi, Ghana, South Africa and Sierra Leone.
They have also Created more than 1,250 partnerships with schools and other organizations in the United States. They have donated more than 1.8 million books and organized major conferences to share best practices among in 2008 (Botswana), 2009 (Lesotho), 2011 (Swaziland), 2013 (Malawi) and 2015 (Ghana).