About the Project
About the Project
Discovering how empty the shelves were in the public library in South Africa where Ewald’s parents used to check out books when they were young, the librarian explained that with all the changes taking place in the new democracy, money was allocated to other, more important needs, such as housing and medical assistance, rather than to the acquisition of books.
With his love for reading - and his personal belief that the better a child can read, the easier that child will find it to learn and to grow – this was an upsetting discovery to make. He wanted to address the matter, but also realized in order for a child to fall in love with reading and with books, they must first have something worthwhile to read.
Katherine Paterson said:
“It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own.”
In many African countries, it is difficult to find a book to read, let alone find a book that is worth reading. The Republic of South Africa is just one of the many countries in Africa with a dire need for books. SA Partners (they are the American partners of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund) said that the vast majority of schools in South Africa have no functional library. In the Province of the Eastern Cape, for example, 93% of schools do not have a library. Overall, 85% of the population of South Africa lives beyond the reach of a public library.
To compound this, about 36% of the people there are living below the poverty line, and with a unemployment rate of 25.1 % (according to the CIA World Factbook), what little money people have is spent on necessities such as housing and food. The pleasure of owning a book is limited to the higher income groups.
Ewald discovered that there are in fact many schools, especially in the rural areas, that are in dire need of books. He wanted to share his passion of reading with as many children in Africa as he possibly could by supplying them with books they might not otherwise have had access to.
His solution was to organize book drives to benefit the schools in Africa.
