Kids: We Want Better Schools!

South African kids are taking it into their own hands. Tired of sub-par schools and education, this week thousands of children marched in Cape Town, asking for books and libraries for their schools. The march on city hall was organized by Equal Education, a movement that the New York Times reports has its movements in the anti-apartheid marches of the previous century.
Ninth grader Abongile Ndesi told NYT: “We want more information and knowledge."

Here's some more of what's going on in South Africa, per the Times, as these students step up to demand their own when it comes to education.

Last year, Equal Education gave students in Khayelitsha, home to more than 500,000 unemployed and working-class people, disposable cameras to document problems in their high schools. They returned with shots of leaking roofs, cracked desks and children crowded around a single textbook.
One image — a bank of window panes at Luhlaza high school, all shattered, captured by a student named Zukiswa Vuka — proved the most resonant. Some 500 windows at the school had been broken for years, leaving the students shivering in wintertime classes.
Equal Education’s first campaign was to get them replaced. The school agreed to put up about $650, an amount the group said it would match. That left some $900 still needed. Over months, the group met with local and provincial managers, organized a communitywide petition drive, held a rally of hundreds of township students and garnered coverage in local newspapers.
...
The libraries campaign is the group’s first attempt to tackle a national issue. With financial support from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Institute, among others, it is also hoping to broaden its membership to include teachers and more parents and to graduate to bigger victories.
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Abongile, the ninth grader from Luhlaza high school, noted appreciatively that she did not have to sit with chattering teeth in class this winter because the broken windows had been fixed.
“I saw that Equal Education can make something impossible possible,” she said.

I don't know about ya'll, but all this talk of kids hungry for libraries reminds me of something going on here in Chattanooga...
Picture taken by Pieter Bauermeister for The New York Times

More Books, Please

Books, books, books. Remember last week when I wrote about the mobile library a local 8-year-old is helping to build? Well, her father (Dr. Allen Coffman, a local pediatrician) dropped by our store today to kickstart the book donation campaign, and he brought that most precious of all commodities: information.
Here is an excerpt from an informational pamphlet written by his daughter, Mary Grace, who is the driving force behind the book drive.

"I would like you to please donate books for a library at a school in Nigeria!!!" Mary Grace writes. "I got interested in doing this because I couldn't believe that a school didn't have a library. I told my daddy, 'It isn't a school without a library.'"

So, she decided that something must be done. Mary Grace, along with friends and family, are planning to ship a 40-foot cargo container to a 300-student Nigerian school, where the shipping container will be used as a mobile library. Pre-school through 10th grade students attend Right Steps School in Abia State, Nigeria, which has some outdated text books, but no books for kids who would like to study or read outside of class. Right Steps is run by Nigerian native Chi Ekwenye, who earned her PhD at the University of Georgia before returning to her home land to open a school, a clinic, and an orphanage known as Susana Homes (accompanying photo is from a Susana Homes event).

Officially, the book donation campaign begins tomorrow, although we already have a few donations here in our store. Dr. Coffman hopes that the mobile library will be ready to ship overseas by September of this year.

To Build a Library

Have a collection of old children's books that is gathering dust in your basement? Bring them on by--we're taking collections! Here at World Next Door, we're helping Signal Mountain third grader Mary Grace Coffman, age 8, gather kid's books for a mobile library in Africa.
You can be a part of the fun--come by our store with an armful and give the magic of Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter (or whoever your own particular favorite might be) to give to children in Nigeria.
We'll have more details later as the Coffmans fill us in on their plans, but for now here's a summary from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Columnist Mark Kennedy featured Mary Grace's quest last in his column last Sunday (read it here). Here's an excerpt from his article:

Mary Grace Coffman, age 8, may be the world’s youngest librarian. The Signal Mountain third grader and her father, pediatrician Allen Coffman, have resolved to help provide a library for a school in Nigeria. “I was amazed that they didn’t have a library,” said Mary Grace, who attends Nolan Elementary and enjoys mystery books. “I told my dad, ‘It’s not a school without a library.’”
The Coffmans came to know about the school through a family friend, Chi Ekwinye, an America-educated Nigerian who earned a doctorate from the University of Georgia and returned to Africa to establish a church-sponsored orphanage, a school and a shelter for battered women.Mary Grace said she and some of her friends have formed a little club they call “World Girls.” They write letters to the kids at the Right Steps School in Abia state Nigeria.
Dr. Coffman said he had read about relief agencies using old shipping containers as makeshift houses, and he had a brainstorm: Why not use one to make an instant library for the school in Africa?His library-in-a-box idea is simple and elegant. The Coffmans have purchased a 40-foot cargo container, about three-quarters the size of a tractor-trailer truck, that they plan to stock with donated children’s books.

Come on down and give--there's lots of reading to be done!