WISH LIST $100: 250 books to
children who might otherwise never
see one; $500: storytelling event
where orphaned children make books
for their library; $1,000: shelving
for a Lubuto Library.
Living and working in Africa for 25 years, professional librarian Jane Kinney
Meyers was at the Fountain of Hope drop-in shelter in Lusaka, Zambia, when
she created her first “street kids library” within a converted shipping container.
What she saw there convinced her that access to libraries could dramatically
improve the lives of AIDS orphans and other vulnerable African children. In
2005 she established the Lubuto Library Project to build libraries with local
agencies already serving street children, and to stock them with book collections assembled and shipped by US
schoolchildren who would learn, simultaneously, about the impact of AIDS on their sub-Saharan African peers.
The Lubuto libraries are life-changing. In addition to serving as necessary havens for children who can read about
worlds outside their own, the libraries also help children learn enough to pass high school entrance exams and
attend boarding schools–and that means a home, a uniform, a community, an education. Your support brings hope
for the present, and hope for the future, to these needy, eager learners.
