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Recent News
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In the past year, Bookfriends has established a Quarterly Newsletter ... this is developed by Bookfriends board members along with a dear person who puts it all together and circulates it by e-mail through Constant Contact. We continually aim to keep growing our list of e-mail folks; please add your name by going to the Contact Us page of this website and giving us your information.
We have reached a milestone in 2011, when Bookfriends passed the mark of 100 schools which have received books from Bookfriends International.
Bookfriends has shared a cooperative project with COVE Alliance and Vernon Hills High School to prepare a container of books for schoolsin Kapeeka, Uganda, NW of Kampala. A part of the project is combining the efforts of these groups in raising the funds to ship the container load across the oceans, and then across land to reach Uganda.
On-Going is the superb work by our dedicated volunteers! During the late Spring, Summer and early Fall, they put together not just one container of 20,000 books, but TWO are nearly ready to ship. The first one will go to north central Tanzania where 11 schools will gratefully receive their textbooks and a library. The second container is for 10 schools in Uganda. These are just waiting for funding to ship them.
Also, on-going is our mission to give local students who are required to complete community service or ministry hours a place to invest their efforts and accrue the hours they need. This is a significant 'win-win-win' benefit for a) the students' requirements are met, b) for their helpful hands-on assistance to Bookfriends at the warehouse, and c) for the progress, ultimately, to move books from the great abundance in the USA into the hands of African students. We also see these young people returning as volunteers after they have completed their requirements ... just because they want to continue helping share books with their counterparts in Africa.
And, also on-going is the continuing march of books coming in: we are often heard saying "We will never have too many good (carefully-selected for school students!) books". Bookfriends is blessed with the constant donations of books from area schools, libraries and individuals. Recently, DeKalb High School Library donated many thousands of their books to Bookfriends - what a GIFT! We also continue to gather books which are donated by public libraries following their sale-weekends; for this ingathering, Bookfriends sends a team of volunteers to hand-select those books we are quite certain we can send to students in Africa. Bookfriends is also granted books from individual donors' home libraries.
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