The African Book Walk

To end the Gambian book famine we need your help.

Books for Africa (BFA) has recently partnered with Hand In Health (HIH) to help them to fulfill their goal of delivering one million books to the people of The Gambia.

In February I will be joining my father and BFA founder Tom Warth, who will lead a group from BFA and HIH to The Gambia to meet with elected officials along with prominent business and university members about ways to help end the book famine and support the United Nations Development Goals of educating women and children.

As part of the journey the BFA team will join others from HIH for the first ever African Book Walk. We will do two walks through the capital of The Gambia accompanied by children from many local schools. Then as a team we will walk the Trans-Gambia highway, from the Senegal border on the south to the Senegal border on the north, to raise awareness about the book famine and distribute 22,000 books to Universities, local schools, and co-ops. This collection of books also contains a “law and human rights library” generously donated by our partner Thomson-Reuters. Check out their website here for more information.

Hand in Health and Books for Africa are asking you to support our walk and donate to help us deliver even more books on the African Book Walk. Currently there is a container of 22,000 books ready to ship. We need your help raising the $10,000 it costs to ship these books to The Gambia. With our target amount we can send 2 containers. In a country with extremely limited book resources and literacy rate of 45%, every book that we can ship to the country makes a huge impact, especially for the women and children. Every dollar you can donate brings us closer to this goal.

Each member of the team is paying for their participation in the African Book Walk so all of your donations will go directly to getting these 22,000 books in the hands of both youth learners and adults who aspire to learn to read.

I know that you may not feel that you have much to give so I am putting up a personal small-grant matching challenge. I will match all donations of $25 or less (up to $500 total). A lot of little donations make a big impact.

I thank you for your support,

Andy and the African Book Walk team