Barranca Elementary School. Courtesy photo

Aspen Elementary School. Courtesy photo

By SHARON ALLEN
African Library Project

Friday, March 17 dawned snowy, slippery, and sloppy in Los Alamos but that could not stop the rented U-Haul truck from visiting six schools and three homes in Los Alamos to pick up boxes of books for Malawi schools!

It took six hours to load 185 boxes containing 11,154 books but K-Kids (elementary schools), Builders Club kids (LAMS) and Mountain School’s first graders enthusiastically bid their hard work (collecting and packing the books) good-bye as the boxes for the African Library Project were loaded into the truck between snow squalls!

Thanks to Kiwanians Steve and Kathy Boerigter, the truck safely delivered all those boxes to the warehouse in New Orleans where before too long they’ll be packed into a cargo container headed across the Atlantic Ocean. 

And in spite of the weather, the African Library Project movie fundraiser, held Monday, March 20 at the SALA Event Center shortly after the books arrived, was well-attended and a fun celebration of all things African!

Thanks to our sponsors for the event (Los Alamos Schools Credit Union, Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation, Samizdat Bookstore, Enterprise Bank and Trust, Del Norte Credit Union, Hartway and Breshears LLC, and Kiwanis, including all Kiwanis kids’ clubs and Key Club) and to many generous donations from the community in the past few months, over $8,000 was raised that will fully fund this shipment of books – and even a few more libraries in the upcoming months!  You’ve done it yet again, Los Alamos! THANK YOU/ASANTE SANA! 

Anyone interested in becoming involved in helping pack or store books for future shipments, email allenfamily926@gmail.com.

Chamisa Elementary School. Courtesy photo

Pinon Elementary School. Courtesy photo

Mountain Elementary School. Courtesy photo