African Library Project. Donors Needed

Hello Everyone, In an effort to help the communities in the remote Mashai River Valley, I'm working with 5 schools near my village to establish libraries. The African Library Project is working with Peace Corps volunteers in Lesotho to facilitate and set up libraries all over the country and to help establish book drives in America. The cost of mailing books is enormous and African Library Project is coordinating a freight container of libraries expected to arrive in May 09.

The remote schools in the mountains where I live in Lesotho have no running water or electricity, no phone signal and most of these students have never left the Mashai River valley, never rode in a car, seen a television or computer, and most don't even own a book. The students in the Mashai River Valley live in small one room grass and mud huts called rondavels with their large families. When they get home from school they have many chores like washing clothes by hand, collecting water from the river, taking care of animals like cows, sheep and donkeys and much more. Many of these students are single or double orphans due to the high rate of HIV prevelance in Lesotho (about 29%). We hope that a few library books will open the students' minds to a world of possibilities and inspire creativity and imagination. The books will also help students increase vocabulary of English (the second official language in Lesotho).

If you have a contact with a school, library or group that might be interested in holding a book drive, please forward this on. If your interested in organizing a book drive please go to the African Library Project website at: http://www.africanlibraryproject.org/ and click on Book Drive guidelines. There are very specific instructions on how to organize a book drive, how to ship the books to the African Library Project (you ship the books to them in America and they ship the books to me in Lesotho). They will be your contact throughout the book drive process (as my access to the internet and phone is very limited).

Please tell them your book drive is to go to Lesotho and the volunteer your working with is Pam Rogers. Please also email me if you have any questions, need "facts" about Lesotho, need additional photos to promote the book drive (although I have a lot at my photo website at http://picasaweb.google.com/ponderosapam

Thank you for your time and consideration in this project. Please email if you have any questions, I head back to my village tomorrow but I'll be checking my email again before Thanksgiving.