Oprah's Grant Boosts Distribution of Children’s Books

To honor Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Oprah’s Angel Network awarded The Global Fund for Children a grant of $50,000. The grant, announced nationwide on The Oprah Winfrey Show in late May 2006, enabled us to scale up the distribution of our books through our Books for Kids project.

Through the grant, we distributed our award-winning books to vulnerable children and youth, especially to young people living in remote regions or in regions that recently experienced conflict. These areas include such countries as Colombia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Timor-Leste.

We leveraged the Oprah grant creatively: our publisher, Charlesbridge, gave us a large discount; we stretched our shipping budget by using unorthodox methods involving students, friends, and embassies; and American Rivers Logistics helped out by giving us a humanitarian rate to ship the books. When this initiative ends, we will have distributed more than 15,000 books with a retail value of nearly $133,000 through 60 community-based organizations in 32 countries.

The response to this initiative, the largest we have undertaken under our Books for Kids project, has been enthusiastic.

The staff and children at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a community in Israel created by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel committed to peace, equality, and understanding between the two peoples, was overwhelmed by the shipment of GFC books.

Deanna Armbruster wrote: “The books were given to the children at Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam, from their English teachers, as a gift during the last week of classes as a way to prepare for the summer ‘camp’ (i.e., school) programs. It was on the day of a school celebration and parents got to see the kids get the books too. . . . I happened to talk to one of the teachers this week, and she mentioned that the children were ‘entranced’ by the books.”

In Sri Lanka, GFC grantee partners Sunera Foundation and Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere (PEACE) will use the books as educational resources in their programs. Maureen Seneviratne, PEACE’s chairperson, wrote: “Thank you very much for the 57 books you have sent us to be distributed among children of P.E.A.C.E. Programmes. Certainly the children will be delighted to receive these books.”

PEACE will keep the books as resources to use in its informal education classes so more children can benefit from them. “All the books are of a very high standard, very useful and interesting,” she wrote.

The students and teachers at St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a Catholic secondary school in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya, wrote us to express their appreciation for the GFC books. The school, established in 2003, is not a GFC grantee partner, but the Oprah grant made it possible for us to invite the school to apply for a book grant. St. Aloysius offers tuition-free education and prepares its students for college. It serves children and youth living in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa, where 600,000 people, half of whom are under the age of 15, live in an area the size of Manhattan’s Central Park.

In Sudan, it took the cooperation of international diplomats to ensure that GFC books reached their proper destination. The Bakhita Vocational Training Center for Women Development in Khartoum requested a total of 244 books comprising 18 titles. Because of international sanctions, it is extremely difficult to ship materials to Sudan.

We had to be creative, as it was not possible to ship the books directly to their destination. Luckily, an Indian ambassador agreed to pass the package along to the Bakhita Vocational Training Center for Women Development. Sister Rita Chung of the Canossian Sisters in Sudan wrote, “I am glad to inform you that they have released the books to the Embassy. Thank you very much for all the work . . . convey my wishes to your colleagues who have helped us in different ways.”

The Oprah grant helped to strengthen our Bolivian grantee partner Biblioteca Th’uruchapitas’s Not to Be Alone program. The program serves 100 children of prisoners by teaching them to read and write while also providing them with the emotional and psychosocial support to become well-adjusted adults. Los Tiempos, a local newspaper, featured a story about the children of Not to Be Alone, highlighting the positive impact of GFC’s donation of quality Spanish-language children’s books to the program.

In Gori, Georgia, Eka Beniashvili, from GFC partner Society Biliki, wrote: “I am writing to inform you that we received the donated books yesterday. I want to express our gratitude towards you once again. Can you guess what will happen when the children arrive from their vacations? Thank you!” Society Biliki is the first group to work with homeless street children in Gori.

Since 1996, our Books for Kids project has donated nearly 61,000 books with a retail value of over $762,000 to organizations and programs promoting children’s literacy all over the world.

To apply for a Books for Kids donation, please click here.