From a Little Talk to 2000 Books for Kenya

How a conversation on the plane led to more than 2000 books for two Bookfeeding libraries in Kenya? Have a read about Carolin and how she met a nice lady who told us about the Books Abroad charity, which is now sending us two pallets of books!

In May 2015 one of our volunteers was lucky to sit next to a lovely woman on the plane who was also on her way back to Aberdeen. She showed her pictures of a really nice library at the airport in Norway which got them talking about the Bookfeeding Project. Our volunteer told her that we had collected so many second-hand books from schools, universities and libraries in Aberdeen that our student flats turned into small libraries as we did not have enough money to send all those books to the Bookfeeding library in Kenya.

She then suggested to contact the charity called Books Abroad in Huntley, who send second-hand books to schools in developing countries. Said and done, we contacted Books Abroad and met up shortly after to tell them about our project and that we were struggling financially to send all the books to Kenya. And as chance would have it, they had read a newspaper about the Bookfeeding Project in Kenya - which we did not even know about – and even had the printed article in their office with a note to contact us.

The more we learned about Books Abroad the more impressed we were. They are a charity who have been sending books to schools in developing countries all over the world for over thirty years! We were overwhelmed by all the books they store in their big warehouse where volunteers sort them according to different categories and level of difficulty. And we were even happier when Books Abroad agreed to ship two pallets of books (more than 1000kg of books) to our libraries in Kenya.

Together with volunteers from Books Abroad who showed us how to pack the boxes of books properly, we packed more than 2000 books into 80 boxes that are now being shipped to Mombasa and will arrive in mid-November. Our Co-Founder Alena is currently in Mombasa and organising the renovations of the building of the library as well as the transport from 40 boxes of books to one of the Bookfeeding libraries in a slum in Mombasa and the Bookfeeding library in Koguta.