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In 2009, Kim Harms' 19-year-old-son died by suicide during his first year of engineering school at Columbia University. But Harms' heartbreak turned to hope, unexpectedly delivered by a country that had suffered through tragedy of its own — one of the worst genocides of modern times.

The KnowledgeSeed Foundation, a high school student organization based in California, set out a goal in 2021 to collect 1,600 books that they would ship to the BFA warehouse in Marietta, GA, for donation to stock the shelves of African schools and libraries. They not only met their goal, but exceeded it, with over 3,100 books donated so far.

Books For Africa, a nonprofit with its main warehouse in Atlanta and offices in St. Paul, Minnesota, is shipping over 130,000 books to schools and libraries in Somalia and Somaliland.

UW-Stout is helping students halfway across the world gain a college education by donating more than 12,500 textbooks to Books for Africa.

University of Wisconsin-Stout donated more than 12,500 textbooks recently to Books for Africa. The books, which were withdrawn from the University Library Instructional Resources Service, otherwise likely would have ended up in a landfill.

In South Africa, lockdowns were hard on at-risk children, leaving them at home with no stimulation or learning opportunities.  Books For Africa was able to support the work of nonprofit 9Miles by providing books and computers for this vulnerable population on South Africa’s west coast.