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THANKS TO GALLERY PROCEEDS, KIBERA'S FIRST SLUM LIBRARY IS UP AND RUNNING.
Start a church library in a Kenyan slum? Talk about the audacity of hope! It's open for business ... thanks to your help For more information, contact Ron Reason, ron@artwithinreason.com THE SHORT VERSION ... In spring 2008 we visited the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. A vast and dire place where among many needs, residents made it known that they had little if any access to books. Thanks to funds raised at several exhibitions at our gallery, and donations from friends, we were able to ship 1,000 books to the slum by December 2008! During a visit in January 2009, we saw the library up and running: books were registered and many were checked out; makeshift library cards were distributed. You can see a photo gallery of kids enjoying the books here, as well as adults volunteering to get things up and running. You can also read a great profile from The Standard newspaper in Nairobi. Next came Phase II: More gallery exhibits were held, more books were collected, and in August, a shipment of 2,000 carefully screened books arrived in Kenya. For a photo set of the kids enjoying their books, as well as spiffy new soccer jerseys, visit this page. Read below for the complete story of our mission, and related links, below, or click the DONATE icon at upper right to make a quick, easy, safe credit card donation now. We are not at this time accepting contributions of books; watch this page in the future in case we start up again. Thanks for your interest and contributions! See the list here. Thanks for stopping by - the kids and adults of the Kibera slum appreciate it!  [Kibera's kids enjoy the books after their arrival in late January, 2009.] THE LONG VERSION ... In spring of this year, my business travel took me to Kenya. There I met some folks in the Kibera slum - second largest in Africa, with 600,000 to a million residents, depending on whom you ask. Many of them had witnessed horrific violence just weeks before, when the country's presidential elections went awry. (Luckily things had settled down before my visit. For a quick visual tour of Kibera, you can detour to my online photo album here.)
Almost immediately I began thinking of ways to make even small contribution to the friendly, hopeful community. The people and places I encountered were fascinating. I met a collective of slum artists from whom I purchased art, which along with photos I took, was resold at my first gallery show, "Hope in a Hard Place." Funds raised from that show have helped pay registration fees for an afterschool group, the Nicofeli Kids Club; helped finance arts programs for the kids to be administered by the Kuona Trust, which supports contemporary art in east Africa; and finally, helped establish a church library.
The library initiative, which has taken on a life of its own, was ignited by some off-hand comments from people I met in the slum. First, I mentioned to my "handler" and tour guide, resident Osir Caleb, that I had spent some down time over the weekend finishing up a book. "Which book? Is it anything that I might like?" He loves to read, but has access to no library and books are expensive, and was asking humbly if I could "pass it on." Separately, a random stranger over a Sunday morning drink chatted me up, unsolicited, about his love for the writing of Robert Ludlum, and showed off the middle third of a paperback book he was sharing with two others. Yes, his brother was given the torn-off first portion, this guy was reading the middle, and later on he would track down the final third of the paperback - ripped from the mother ship - when he was ready to read it. Books are that scarce. You can read a detailed story of this encounter on my travel blog, here. You can also visit with Osir, his wife Rosemary, and their kids in their home, via my Flickr album here.
Osir offered that his church (St. George Orthodox Church) was hoping to start a library but was at a standstill with no resources. Upon returning to the states, I started thinking: How to get books to Osir and friends?
Through good fortune I amassed a small treasure trove of hand-selected books: at Chicago thrift shops (super deep discount), a massive book sale at my church (five large bags for free, thank you Broadway United Methodist!), and donations from St. Paul's Middle School in Valparaiso, Ind. (my hometown), where I had gone to speak to Mrs. Bengert�s middle school pupils. Then reality set in: shipping these things overseas is way expensive. Appeals to the Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx yielded no assistance with the costs. So thinking creatively, we created Phase 1 fundraising which resulted in sufficient money to ship 1,000 books to the slum by end of December 2008. Yeah! I visited in January 2009 and saw the books being registered and used by extremely grateful adults and kids. You can view photos of that here. Phase II fundraising followed, bringing in enough money to help ship more than 2,000 more books to the library. You can see the kids enjoying the latest shipment of books in August, 2009 here.
HOW TO HELP: You can make an instant, safe donation right now via the PayPal button at upper right (click to visit secure PayPal page), and feel good for the day. (Or if you prefer to send a check via snail mail, see the address on our contact page, or phone us for details.) However, if you want to spread your good will further and make the donation in the name of a family member, friend, or co-worker (for a birthday, holiday, wedding or other event), we�ll send them a card announcing the donation of a set amount of money in their honor. Once you�ve made the donation, you should be taken to a page where you can complete a form like the following, to provide us with instructions for delivering your card. Or you can fill out the form right here:
All proceeds will go toward the future of the library, book acquisitions, shipping costs, etc. Any amount is fine, but we suggest a $25 minimum. Larger amounts are extra appreciated, of course. Thanks to all who have visited this page and especially, to all who consider contributing to the cause! [Please note: Because I am not yet a 501(c)(3) nonprofit - just the "little guy" trying to directly make a difference on a solo basis - donations are not tax deductible according to IRS guidelines. If you wish, feel free to subtract the amount you would have expected from the tax deduction.]
 Faithful volunteer Jessica Gilbert helps pack as many books into each box as possible in preparation for shipping, in Chicago, September 2008. In all we ended up shipping 1,000 books during Phase 1! Thanks for your support! |
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Click image to enlarge  From the Sunday magazine of The Standard newspaper in Nairobi: An extensive profile of the library's launch. (Printed Feb. 15, 2009)    [Some of Kibera's kids who inspired me to help during my first visit to the slum, March 2008.] |
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