News

From the beginning of its story, Read To Recovery’s plot continues to thicken as the program continues to thrive. Read to Recovery began with psychology instructor Barb Houle's idea to help schools, health centers and hospitals over in the South African country of eSwatini — formerly known as Swaziland before its new name change in 2018 — get access to reading material for patients who were recovering from various treatments and procedures.

Recently, IBPA member and independent publisher Barefoot Books partnered with Books For Africa to ship 300,000 copies of their bestselling titles to orphans with AIDS and their caregivers in Mozambique. IBPA was impressed with this sizable and noteworthy project, so we spoke to Barefoot Books’ Co-Founder and CEO Nancy Traversy to see how it all came to be.

Four canisters loaded with 30,000 copies of 10 different Barefoot Books titles in Portuguese, with a retail value of $6 million, are scheduled to arrive in Mozambique later this summer after being custom-printed in Hong Kong and shipped from its port. The books will be distributed to AIDS orphans and their caregivers. This shipment of 300,000 books is part of a new Books For Africa initiative in which the organization will begin publishing some books in local languages for charitable donation through a partnership with a publisher. Typically, BFA sends used book donations to countries in Africa in English, and occasionally French, Spanish, and Arabic.

Ten years ago, the late Todd Bol built a doll-sized schoolhouse out of wood, filled it with his mother’s books and put it outside his house as a neighborhood book exchange. When asked why he did this, he said he was simply paying homage to his mother, a school teacher and lover of books who had recently passed away. Over the years, what originally started as a way to honor his mother has now snowballed into a worldwide book-sharing movement.

2019 has been a record setting year at BFA! As we approach the end of our fiscal year on June 30th, we have surpassed 3.2 million books shipped to Africa this year, already a new record. We are on track to see a remarkable 42% increase over last year's shipping total. Check out our summer newsletter to learn more about our record-setting year, and see what BFA has been doing as we work to end the African book famine.