What We Do

Bookfriends provides children and their educators and librarians in Africa hope for the future. Education is the key for African youth to become self-sustaining and contributing citizens of a better world. Each book we donate is very much like casting pebbles into a still pond: the ripples created by each book received, creates the awakening of a young mind!

Bookfriends is doing a wonderful thing in gathering books from our American schools and shipping them to students in other parts of the world where they do not have libraries or textbooks and reading books in their schools.

The schools’ needs are pre-determined prior to gathering books for a shipment through direct contact with our established and growing network of school and village leaders in Africa.

We work to acquire current, appropriate middle school and high school books in the English language from donors in the United States. The donated textbooks and library books are received at our warehouse in Wauconda, IL, where volunteers process the books, sort for subject matter, and prepare for shipping. A container holding about 20,000 books and other educational materials is sent to 10 African schools at a time. The container moves from our warehouse to those schools thanks to generous donors who believe in the mission and effectiveness of Bookfriends.

Hundreds of classrooms have been transformed into vibrant learning environments. Each school receives a well-chosen library of approximately 1,000 books. To date, more than 300,000 students have found a productive direction for their lives, thanks to volunteers and donors of Bookfriends.