Last summer ( see blog posts from July 07) I studied with international French teachers at the University of Rennes, teachers from Brazil, Italy, and Nigeria among them. Stella Omonigho listened quietly as we talked over the trials of teaching, as teachers around a coffee break often do. She shook her head then, and told us about teaching thousands of college students French and English with a college library whose shelves were bare. They have no textbooks. It was about a count of three until I spewed coffee and gasped, "It's an adoption year!" To her uncomprehending face I explained that in a six year cycle, we adopt new textbooks. That means that the whole school system will ditch over 1000 textbooks!
And so the Ship the Books! project was born. Yesterday middle schoolers and their families collected, counted, packed, weighed, measured, and labeled over 50 boxes of books. Today the shipping company truck will start them on their long journey to the University of Benin City in Nigeria. We still haven't raised enough money to cover the skyrocketing trucking and shipping costs (that include an armed escort from the port of Lagos to Benin City), but the Carmel community will come through when we get the word out. Here is a look at the power of children:
