Rotary in Action in South Sudan

More than 100,000 books shipped to South Sudan have been unloaded and are in the hands of students. The materials, received in 2024 by the Rotary Club of Juba, include legal, pharmaceutical, and other science textbooks, along with 11 computers loaded with an additional 33,000 textbooks. The shipment had a value of over $1.5 million. “The books are of great value to the students because not all of them could access online information due to internet issues,” says Simon Yongo, a past president of the Juba club. The shipment was coordinated by Books for Africa, a Minnesota nonprofit supported in part by Rotarians. Charles Cogan, a member of the Rotary Club of Northfield, Minnesota, who led the project, says senior Rotary leaders helped the project coordinators connect with UNESCO and the humanitarian arm of the U.S. Defense Department. “The partnerships were the key here and turned a smaller project of one container into five containers with 100,000-plus books,” Cogan says. The project was supported by the Juba club as well as 14 clubs in Minnesota and Wisconsin and a District 5960 matching grant.