Mbale Reading Revolution: How Your Book Donations Sparked Literacy in Eastern Uganda
Because of your generosity, nearly 16,000 books arrived in Mbale, bringing literacy and the promise of school libraries to thousands of children.
Imagine having never owned a book.
In fact, imagine your school doesn’t have a library, and you are responsible for buying your own textbooks, even though your family lives a very difficult life and often cannot afford to feed all your siblings every day, much less buy books.
This is the reality for the children that Global Village Connect works with in eastern Africa, and it’s common continent wide. According to Books for Africa, a nonprofit that ships containers of books to rural Africa, “Most African children who attend school have never owned a book of their own. Many people in the United States take these educational necessities for granted, but children in Africa cherish books.”
This is why it was such an incredible boon to work in partnership to send nearly 16,000 books to Global Village Connect’s partner schools and communities in eastern Uganda.
It takes a village
It is because of relationships that these volumes found their way to Uganda. Thanks to generous donations from Books for Africa, The Stillman Foundation, and Kar Ben Publishing, our teachers and children are smiling today.
Many conversations, need assessments, and spreadsheets later, a truck laden with 500 boxes of books arrived in Mbale, Uganda where GVC workers sorted, boxed, and later delivered the books to twenty synagogues and five schools.
Joy you can feel from across the globe
Sorting 500 heavy boxes of books in the sun was hot and tiring work, but when the team delivered the boxes to their recipients, the joy on the faces of headmasters, rabbis, and children made it all worth the effort.
Debbie Glotter, GVC Boardmember, and her husband Mark took the lead in organizing this incredible feat. Debbie, Mark, and the rest of the GVC team were so excited to see the smiling faces of those receiving the books as the thank you emails and photos started to pour in.
“I’ve been getting thank you messages all week,” explains Debbie. “It’s really overwhelming; people get really surprised when they see the quantity they receive! For example, Hadassah Primary School was given almost 2,000 books, and Buyanga Primary received 7,300. Such quantities are often given to a whole school district to share among schools,” explains Debbie.
One such thank you, from Charles, Buyanga’s headmaster, highlights the incredible scale and immediate plans for these books:
“We are grateful for the textbooks. The books are so good that they serve all the grades up to University level. We’ve agreed to establish a library that is accessible to all the students at all levels but we shall have some put in classrooms according to the class levels. We need to have enough shelves to keep them safe and for easy identification. We need eight shelves and two tables. Thank you so much!!”
— Charles, Headmaster, Buyanga Primary School
New books, new infrastructure
Which highlights another need of these communities, infrastructure for the donations.
Since books are so rare, they are extremely valuable and at considerable risk for theft. And, since most dwellings and buildings don’t have glass on the windows, locks on the doors, or even bookshelves, the communities need new infrastructure to keep the books safe from weather damage and theft.
Global Village Connect has invested in building updates, locking doors, and bookshelves. This investment in infrastructure will ensure that the texts will continue to benefit children and community members for years to come.
The investment will also include weekly classes for those who want to learn English, one of the national languages of Uganda. Many adults have not had the opportunity to learn English at school, and to be able to provide this opportunity will be an incredible gift for so many in these communities.
