The Power of Books

We've had a lovely message from Mandrem in Goa from Helen at Helping Elsewhere. This is the only place outside the UK we give books to and we are delighted to do so. Helen writes:

"Once again we are offering huge, huge thanks to Give a Book for donating another wonderful selection of children’s reference books!! This is the second year running that our friends Claudia and Andy have foregone a good part of their flight luggage allowance to bring these valuable resources out and Jacinta, our Mandrem headmistress, was lost for words when trying to express her gratitude to people from so far away. As before, we are dividing the books between Mandrem and Sirsi (who haven’t quite got theirs yet!).

Please do take a look at what Give a Book does – it really is extraordinary – and if you believe in the power of books to address needs and spread pleasure across society then do please think about helping out where and when you can.

Back to Mandrem, and we were also privileged to meet two of Claudia’s and Andy’s friends, Henry and Sue Dixon. They are also long term Goa fans and had come loaded with all sorts of reading and arts materials for Mandrem school. We were very touched to learn that Henry had taken quite a lot of time out from a very busy year as High Sheriff of Clwyd in order to source a lot of donated books.

And let us not forget Filomena and Jorge Borba’s continued support in America – this year they have sent an appreciable amount of money to be spent on the library and sports equipment. They fell in love with our little bit of Goa when they visited a few years back, and have continued to support us from Boston ever since. And don’t forget they are sponsoring two more Sirsi schoolkids!

It was a really great ‘feel good’ experience when Henry, Sue and I visited Mandrem a few days back to give the teachers and kids an amazing range of books, to give Jacinta the money, and to show Henry and Sue the quality of our little village school now!

Thank you to everybody again for making this work!"

Now go back to Give a Book.

Bookworm in India

We've been a given a lovely thank you present by Helen from Helping Elsewhere. It's a special beautiful book called The Wedding of the Frogs, and is published by Bookworm where children learn to love books. Thank you, Helen, this really means a lot to us.

Helping Elsewhere: Books to Mandrem in Goa

Give a Book is sometimes asked to give books to charities or projects other than our regular recipients. We recently sent out books to a school in Goa. Claudia and Andy took them out and now Claudia has written to us:
"We delivered the books to Mandrem school last Friday, so that the headmistress Jacinta could be there and Helen who runs the helping elsewhere charity.
...We took the suitcases to the library and unpacked them with the headmistress, a class and the science teacher.
The look of amazement on their faces was wonderful.
...About 20% of the books  have been given to [another] school, about 4 hours drive into the interior, up in the hills behind behind the coastal strip, where any sort of movement into the 20 th let alone 21st century is very slow... Apparently this little school has even less than the Mandrem school and the books were really [to] help the teachers help the children and provide some sort of starting point to teach from.
.... it was a real delight seeing their excitement when they received the books."