Does anybody know where I can apply for a grant of USD 12,000 on behalf of www.AfricaMissionAlliance.com to give to BooksForAfrica so that I can ship a forty-foot container of college textbooks, and some children's science and cultures, and juvenile math and world history books to a school in Butare, Rwanda? That school would then give the college textbooks to the National University of Rwanda and most of the children's books to other schools.
There is only now a public library being built in Kigali, the first in the country.
When I donated some books to the medicinal botany college at the NUR (Mycelium Running, Edible Forest Gardens, etc) they were so grateful it was embarrassing. There are no textbooks in that college. The student's lecture notes become their textbooks. Anyway, the professors asked me to look up and get to them a variety of information that excited me tremendously, but later I wondered, why don't they have this information already? And then I remembered their paucity of books and the greater than USD 200 internet cost per month, and it is so slow and you are usually cut off.
I am dying to get them books, but I am allowed only 100 pounds per trip but I have to take my breathing machine and the suitcases weigh ten pounds each so I can take only about 65 pounds of books at a time.
Books For Africa is my best bet, but where am I going to get the twelve thousand dollars? I love giving money to good people, but I've never had to ask for money before. I don't know how to go about it. Do any of you grantwriters have any ideas?
24 Jan 2008, 12:44 pm
