Books for a Better World
Meet Nellie, Ariel and Lorenzo. The big smiles are because they are holding their first-ever books. Their family has no source of income except when their mother can find work as a domestic servant, to support them, her elderly mother, her brother, and her soon-to-be –born baby. When Sue Harris, their friend and neighbour and Lay Minister in the Anglican Church of Belize, gave them these used copies of Dr. Seuss and Clifford, the Big Red Dog, she says the children “fell on them.”
Sue and her husband Chris look after eight children from poor homes in Belize, buying them food, clothes and books when she can obtain them. Since there is not a single bookstore in the whole country, this is a challenge!
Belize, an English-speaking country in Central America, has a population of around 360 thousand people. The management of education in Belize is a partnership between the churches and the government. Most schools are church run, with the government funding salaries, primary school textbooks, and some elements of capital funding. The funding is inadequate by developed world standards, and the number one request from their teachers are for “more books!”
When I asked Sue if I could mail some children’s books to her from Canada, she told me that the shipping costs were prohibitive. That, plus the absence of any bookstores, posed a dilemma.
That’s when I stumbled on betterworldbooks.com, an internet site that will ship new or used books anywhere in the world free.
I was like a kid in a candy store. Ever the bargain-hunter, I browsed through their extensive children’s book selection and selected an assortment of used favourites that my daughters and I had enjoyed. True to their promise, Better World Books delivered the books free to Sue, who is happily distributing them to poor children and needy schools in Belize.
Sue says, “There are probably thousands of families like this in Belize, but if the children can get an education, then they are the future. “
Nellie, Ariel and Lorenzo attend school about 7 miles away. They walk for two miles, then get the bus or a ride from a passing vehicle the rest of the way. That kind of commitment to an education is rare in developed countries. Even so, it’s hard to imagine learning without adequate reading material.
If you feel inspired to donate books to a developing country, check out Better World Books. If you’re interested in helping out children in Belize, you can have books shipped to Sue Haris, PO Box 695, Belmopan, Cayo, Belize, Central America.
The smiles say it all.
