Books Open the World … for children, women, and others in Uganda
I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write about this…duh!
Last spring a UF graduate student, Joel Hartter, now an Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire, brought a project he’d become involved with during his doctoral work in Uganda, Books Open the World, to the Smathers Libraries.
As the website describes it, “Books Open the World (BOTW) is a non-profit, secular organization that seeks to promote and encourage education and opportunity in rural communities to children and women through community libraries, literacy classes, vocational training, support groups, and by supporting all levels of education.”
Here at UF, a group of librarians and some other folks have written articles for library magazines, garnered money from grants, inspired a young librarian to help develop the libraries in Uganda, and developed BOTW’s website. We’re also collecting books for the libraries, getting non-profit status, and looking for more grant money.
We are sending many books from here, but the communities also want many books in the native languages. Those can only be bought in-country, so for that cash and grants are needed.
If you are interested in helping in other ways, contact the organization. It’s all quite exciting.
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