Books for Kids in Slums:

One of the things you find absent in schools, children's homes and clubs are books. As you move through towns, villages, including large cities there is an absence of libraries.  Not only libraries, but there are not that many bookstores, all pointing to one thing...Kids in Africa often do not read at home, away from school.

A great part of the learning process is to discover through reading. As a child I began reading at an early age, since I had every childhood disease known and unknown to man, from scarlet fever to mumps and everything in between.  The hours in bed were filled with books, reading, and when I had scarlet fever there were only my father's books in the room, so there I was at 11 years old reading Hemingway, Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Rilke and many others.  My favorite however remained Karl May, an author who wrote adventure novels about the American West and other adventurous places.  (He is still the most read German author in history.)

Reading allowed me to discover, to close my eyes in my present circumstance and travel to far-off places in my mind.  I spend hours upon hours at our small town post-World War II library which still had the smell of a hospital about it. I did not mind, entering this wonderful place of discovery several times a week to discover the faraway places of America, Africa, and Asia. 

Now, I am older, but reading has always remained with me. It has always allowed me to discover new horizons. Today I might read things in a different manner, via the internet and the like, but the process of growth and discovery continues.

One of the things that has always troubled me while in Africa, was the lack of books, the fact that most children never have a chance to discover through reading.  To me, that is sad, but the good news is that something can be done about it.

This page is simply an attempt to do something about, but I need many others to help send some books to Uganda in East Africa, where these books will help children to read, to discover a world beyond their own, to dream and to become motivated to learn in order to reach beyond the limitations of their broken world of a slum.

Last updated: 13 February 2008

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