Mountain Elementary School students show off the box they decorated to ship books to Africa. Courtesy photo

A book packing workshop at Chamisa Elementary School. Courtesy photo

Mountain Elementary School first grader and a real work of art! Courtesy photo

LAHS Key Club members pack donated books during a recent meeting. Courtesy photo

BY SHARON ALLEN
African Library Project

 While March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, is widely celebrated as Read Across America Day, Los Alamos Kiwanis school clubs would like to extend that to “Read Across Africa Day” too!

The recent drive to collect loads of children’s books over the past few months in Los Alamos to make 8 school libraries in Malawi, through the African Library Project, was a HUGE success! Very close to 10,000 books were collected right here in our town-full-of-readers! As of this writing, 6 libraries of 1200 books each are packed and ready to leave Los Alamos, while 2 more libraries are still in the packing stages. All 200+ boxes will leave Los Alamos on a U-Haul truck headed to a New Orleans warehouse on Mar. 17.  There they will be loaded onto a cargo ship headed to Africa, arriving later this summer.

At a cost of about $650 per library, K-Kids, Builders Club, Key Club, and Kiwanis members have been working hard to raise the $5000+ needed to fund this shipment. Tax deductible donations in any amount toward shipping costs would be much appreciated and can be made online through the Kiwanis Club of Los Alamos: https://losalamos.kiwanisone.org/ALP.

 You can also support this project by attending a FUN, family friendly fundraising event, a movie night at SALA on Monday, Mar. 20 from 4 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. We’ll be showing Duma and The First Grader. Please buy advance tickets ($10) here: https://sala-los-alamos-event-center.square.site/s/shop.  For questions please contact Sharon Allen at allenfamily926@gmail.com. Thank you for your support, Los Alamos!  We’re changing lives one book at a time!