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My name is Debra Atherton. My husband Jim and I are two of a small team of volunteers from the charity 'Book-Cycle' (www.book-cycle.org) who set out to repurpose 50,000 educational books by way of a container shipment from the UK to Ghana. Basically Book-Cycle is a UK based charity which is run entirely by volunteers and is primarily aimed at helping children worldwide through the provision of free books and educational resources. It also helps to reforest England by offering to plant trees and providing information on sustainability in lots of different ways.
The Ghana project is organized in conjunction with “Thrive Africa UK”, another small grass roots charity run, as is Book-Cycle, entirely by volunteers, and is aimed at using the 50,000 books to help children in Ghana by creating 'new' libraries using educational books donated by UK schools. Lots of books are thrown away by UK schools as they can't find a use for them. This project used World Book Day on 3rd March as a central theme in getting local schools to donate unwanted books. Most schools in the Wigan area were approached and Wigan Council was very supportive. The container was shipped out in May filled with the 50,000 books donated.
There are 14 volunteers – including the two of us - and we will be flying out on the 11th July 2016. There is still a great deal of preparation to do, primarily organising charity events to raise funds, it's obviously going to be a big effort. The volunteers will be in Ghana for 2 weeks and will be – for example - renovating and decorating disused school rooms to create learning spaces for children. Also, of course, stacking and organising the books as they are unloaded. Finally, some of the volunteers expect to be involved in helping out at other local charities.
Some of the events we have been part of (or will be part of) so far have been:
- charity cake sales in Wigan Town Centre
- Car Boot Sales at DW Stadium (Wigan’s first ‘proper’ Car Boot we think!)
- a sponsored canal towpath walk from Burscough to Wigan
- a vegan meal in Beech Hill Book-Cycle planned for 19th June
- a music event in Higher Ince Labour Club on 24th June
- a quiz night at St Anns community hall
Of course we were also fully involved in sorting and packing the boxes of books ready to be loaded into the container later in May.
It is estimated that it will cost around £1000 for each volunteer to cover flights, food, accommodation, visas, vaccinations, etc. So Book-Cycle is approaching various businesses and organisations around Wigan to ask if they can help out, in whatever way is appropriate to them. Additionally each volunteer will be seeking individual sponsorship to cover as much of the cost as possible. So the two of us are hoping that Fundrazr will help provide some individual sponsorship from friends of ours, wherever they are.
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