The people of Uganda have been through so much I find it so unbelievable that they are as open and friendly as they are.  They have to be one of the warmest people I have met in my life.  They welcome strangers into their homes, feed them, and pray for them upon departure.  They were honest and open when talking to us.  The people we were meeting through the Legacy Scholarship Program offered by Invisible Children were the proud parents and it was clear that they just want the best for their children.

The folks of South Africa have been as warm.  The students or Learners as they are called here have sung and danced for us at each location.  The teachers and other students have given speeches to thank us for our work.  I must say I have met some very poised 7th graders that are able to speak to a crowd of people in a stirring way!  Most of the libraries have been set up and are in good shape but could always use more space and books.  They serve an incredible amount of food to share with us and it is an outright celebration that we have come to visit.  Next time I visit home the family is really going to have to do some things differently because a person could get use to this type of treatment!

South Africa is a beautiful country with rolling hills and deep valleys. We are in Zulu country where Homesteads are settled on the ridges of the mountains and are meticulously kept.  The sunsets have been amazing and today we even were able to witness a sugar cane burn. The children wave as you pass them in the car and they are lined up in the playground waiting for us when we arrive.

While there is a need for books in South Africa as there is in Uganda, South Africa is fortunate enough to have a fairly good infrastructure.  Roads are in fairly good shape and organizations like the Rotary are well established and working to improve education overall.  They have built over 3000 classrooms in the area we are in and continue to work to build more and supply books.  Books for Africa(BFA) and Room to Read have done amazing things here and the books lining the shelves in the classrooms and libraries prove that.

If for no other reason, this trip has been great for all of us because we are seeing the action “on the ground”.  We are meeting the headmasters that work long and hard to make sure they are providing a good educational experience while supplying nutrition and counseling, and in some cases parenting to the Learners in their schools.  We are meeting dedicated teachers that want to do whatever they can to help the student even if it means going for more education themselves.  It is extremely exciting to see the children so happy to be utilizing their libraries and reading the books we have sent.  It is also good to see how a community like the one we are staying here in South Africa and organizations like Room to Read, BFA and Invisible Children can change the direction for not one but many children.  Work they do should be commended and supported!

We leave here tomorrow and head to Capetown.  More to come.

July 6, 2010

We have just landed in Uganda!  It is quite a small airport, with quite a few Coca-Cola logos.  We were immediately greeted by Andrew from Invisible Children.  We traveled approximately five hours from the Entebbe airport to Gulu, where we were staying in a hotel in the middle of downtown.  The first culture shock of the trip occurred when we immediately were thrown into the craziest traffic I have ever seen.  Our van driver was constantly honking at cars, scooters, and bicycles riding the shoulder of the road.  Along with the people on the side of the road, we witnessed goats, cows, and monkeys.  Some of them were even riding in the back of the trucks!  The power seems to go out in Gulu on a semi-regular basis, also.  We have been adjusting pretty quickly though and our flash lights have come in handy on a few occasions.

July 7, 2010

Breakfast.  We have become quite accustomed to Spanish omelettes, toast, bananas, and fruit juice every morning at our hotel.  Apparently though, you become a target of mosquitoes when you eat a lot of bananas and then sweat.  Most of us have chosen to live dangerously and just eat lots of bananas.

After breakfast, Andrew picked us up from the hotel and took us to the Invisible Children office in Gulu.  There is a case on the wall in the lobby, displaying all of the products that IC has created since they started.  He gave us a short history of the organization, and then introduced us to James and Patrick.  Both super nice guys.  We then went to four schools that have benefitted from our donations, and Invisible Children.  Each school had a library in a different stage of progress.  It was amazing and very satisfying to finally see some physical evidence of the work that we have been doing since we have each started working at BWB.  A few of the people we met were very interested to talk to us, and we were able to interview them for our website.  Very exciting stuff.  The teachers and the students were great, and were very happy to see us.

July 8, 2010

Spanish omelette, bananas and toast.  We met up at the Invisible Children office, and visited three more schools with Andrew from IC.  We started by traveling a couple of hours to the first school and then worked our way back to downtown Gulu.

At the schools we visited,  we met even more excited and friendly teachers and students and saw more libraries.  We spotted several books with our BWB barcodes on them and saw boxes with Books For Africa logos on them. Very cool.  Andrew introduced us to a few of the classrooms full of students, and they applauded us!  Just then, I felt the proudest I have even been of my association with Better World Books.

Lunch was at a restaurant in Gulu with live music.  Our second meal of authentic Ugandan food went even better than the first.  Mattuck is quickly becoming my favorite dish here.  Very similar to mashed potatoes.

During our trip back to the hotel, a soldier asked if we could give him a ride down the road.  Andrew politely declined, as our driver was not licensed to carry any armed passengers.  I would have never thought I’d witness an armed soldier being told “No.”  Pretty amazing.

July 9, 2010

No school visits today.  Instead we went to the homes of some of the students! Most of us went on our own, to shadow IC mentors.  Mentors who mostly got where they needed to go on motor bikes!  Since Maura, Stephanie, and I are not as adventurous as the rest, we traveled together in a van with a mentor named Stella.  The first two guardians we met paid for their children’s school fees from planting crops.  Mostly maise, cabbage, onions and assorted greens.  We were offered freshly grown maise, which we excitedly accepted.  If you have never eaten maise, it is very similar to corn on the cob, but much lighter in color.  No butter and no salt.

The best lesson that I have learned on this trip so far, is to live within your means.  Don’t stress about what you cannot immediately acheive or afford.  You will alleviate a lot of stress.  If we were able to speak the native language, I’m sure we could have spent an entire afternoon talking to some of the parents.  Tomorrow we are sitting in on a meeting with IC, and then heading to a wildlife park!  More later.

– Jason Staples, Customer Care

Our last few days in Uganda were very memorable. We all had the opportunity to travel for one day with Invisible Children mentors as they made visits to families and students. Invisible Children sponsors a scholarship program for nearly 700 students in the Gulu, Uganda area. These students not only have their education paid for, but are partnered with a mentor who helps the student to focus on their studies. Many of the students attend boarding schools as well and the mentors communicate between the students and families so news from home makes it to school and back again.

The main mode of transportation for the mentors is cheap, fast and easy to maneuver in the busy Gulu streets:  motorbikes! A number of us even cruised a little way out of town and into the bush, where the countryside is green, lush and covered in a mixture of tall grass, tasseling maize, and palm trees. I stopped at five different homes over the course of the day (which included a break at lunch for the local high school volleyball tournament) with Jefferey, who mentors 32 students in all.  The conversations were in the local language, and usually centered around the health of the family members and other happenings at home. It was a fascinating and humbling experience to be invited into homes, offered maize (like sweet corn, without the sweet, butter or salt!) and soda and hear the conversations translated from my mentor. What an incredible look into the real day-to-day experiences of a wonderfully hospitable and open culture.

So much of our trip has been enlightening and terrific. However, I feel it is only right to share some of our more anecdotal experiences as well.  In preparation for a cruise on the Nile which was planned for our time at Murchison Falls National Park (see Jason’s upcoming post), one of our members visited the Pharmacy asking for a motion sickness remedy. Upon leaving, walking to our restaurant and opening the box and reading the details, we found it was actually a remedy for morning sickness. This person was able to return the purchase for a full refund.

Ugandan vehicles have to be built to survive hard and bumpy roads in the dry season and large mud puddles and slicks in the wet season. Our vehicle was from the Invisible Children office, and held up wonderfully for our long hours on the road. One afternoon, as we were about halfway through a five our trek, we stopped to stretch. As soon as everyone was out of the car, we heard a hissing and looked; our rear tire was losing air, and quickly went completely flat.  Luckily we had a spare with us, but the jack we had wasn’t tall enough to get the vehicle far enough off the ground! The next hour (maybe more) was spent trying to place the tire in the perfect pothole, while keeping the axel on high ground so  we would be able to get the tire off. The truly ironic part was that this was one of the smoothest gravel roads we had been on in days…

More stories to come!

–Audrey Mohr

P.S.   Wanna see how the whole thing started?  Check out the earlier Africa trip posts:

On the ground in Africa
Africa Trip: Day 1, Audrey
Africa Trip: Day 1, Maura

It is with great sadness and yet great hope and inspiration that all of us at Better World Books let our friends at Invisible Children know that we are with them in this time of mourning and loss.  While I did not know Nate Henn personally, he is the type of individual that exemplifies the tremendous passion and enthusiasm of the IC community to change this world for the better… no matter the naysayers; no matter the odds (click here to find out more about Nate).  He, his family and friends, and the entire Invisible Children organization will be in our thoughts and prayers at this very difficult time.

It will be in memory of Nate, as well is in the name of every member of Invisible Children who labors to bring peace, justice and a better world through literacy and education to the children and families of Northern Uganda, that we at Better World Books will continue our efforts to support IC’s mission in all that we do.

David Murphy
President and CEO
Better World Books

The Journey

Most of us started in the states, and it has been a multi-leg excursion.  South Bend – Chicago-London-Emtebee-Gulu.  All total 15 hours over two days, will it be worth the trip?

I don’t know about all the others on this journey but there are some of us that had no idea what lay ahead or what to even expect.  What will the people be like, what will the temperature be, what will the places we visit will be like and what will folks think of us are all questions that were going through my mind.  I know for me I had no point of reference whatsoever.  Yes, I’ve seen the charity advertisements on late night TV, but that couldn’t be what it is ALL like?  Yes, I’ve seen movies like Out of Africa, but come on – that is just a movie and not about current times.  I’ve seen the videos our literacy partner Invisible Children has produced, but that can’t be what it is like now, things have changed, right?

So for some of us, we had no way to be prepared for this trip.  I chose before coming not to think about that.  I chose to realize that this was an opportunity of a lifetime and I was taking it.  For me this was fulfillment of a life-long dream.  I always said I wanted to go to Africa before I was fifty…I only missed it by a couple of days!  (OK now everyone knows how old I am)

The journey was topped off with a 5 hour drive from Kempala to Gulu.  We travelled through several villages, passed many primary schools, crossed the Nile and even saw monkeys.  I have to say by the time yesterday ended…I felt complete and the actual trip hadn’t even really started.

On the Ground

I can only say that this has been so far an amazing experience and I am only 3 days into it.  I can only equate it to other places I’ve been by saying it is like some of the less developed islands I’ve been to in the Caribbean.  However, for most of those trips one had the resort to go back to at night or the cruise ship, so in that way, being and living among the people has been eye opening to say the least.  Accommodations are superior I’m sure, but if you are expecting someone to turn down your bedding or bring you room service, that just won’t happen.  In fact if the generator stays on while you are getting ready for bed, and there is water in the shower you are doing well.

Please don’t think this is a bad thing.  It isn’t, who needs the lights when they are sleeping and a trickle will do what you need it to in the shower.  I’ve figured out the mosquito netting, and realize why the room comes with flip-flops…so I figure I’m ahead of the game!  Food has been awesome and I’m happy to report that you don’t have to worry about the water when it comes to coffee…warm milk mixed with instant coffee…again, does the trick.  OK it isn’t Starbucks, but I have to say this morning sitting on the porch with this wonderful group of people hearing the roosters….it had to be the best cup I’ve ever had.

We set off today to visit 4 schools with our partner Invisible Children.  All were secondary schools or as they refer to here senior schools.  Apparently most of the government and past NGO support has gone into primary schooling.  Invisible Children has made a decision to invest in secondary schools and universities with programs like Schools for Schools and Legacy Scholarship Programs.  These programs deal with funding a particular students studies, building libraries or improving water systems within the boarding schools.  They have done and continue to do great work here always keeping in mind sustainability and giving those that are receiving the ability to carry it forward and make it grow.

I have to admit one of the things I was worried about was that I would be depressed seeing the conditions people live in and seeing the lack of books in the schools, but I don’t find that I am feeling at all like that.  I’m excited to see that things are being done to correct a situation that has been fueled by war and displacement.  I am happy to know that perhaps in a very small way I have done something by working where I do that may be helping.  I also find that the people here are happy.  Interestingly enough, one doesn’t need what we in the western world think we do.  Family is important here, friendship and community reign supreme.  Definitely a reality check for me!

Tune in again…

– Maura Varian, Managing Director, UK Operations

Check out the earlier Africa trip posts:

On the ground in Africa
Africa Trip: Day 1, Audrey

The first award goes to our top vote getter Invisible Children.  They have  launched innovative programs that advance education and create lasting stability in war torn Northern Uganda.

Through the Readers’ Choice grant, Invisible Children will provide comprehensive literacy training to 400 individuals displaced by the conflict and now returning to their ancestral homes. These 400 participants will use their literacy skills, paired with micro-finance training, to help create and manage small businesses that will change the lives of their families, create opportunities for friends and neighbors, and advance the economic standing of their community at large.

And this year we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just about votes, so we put all of our applicants up for committee review.  And the winner of the second $20,000 grant goes to The Cooperative for Education (CoEd)!  They are a Cincinnati, OH, and Guatemala City-based 501 non-profit organization. By promoting traditional and technological literacy, CoEd’s sustainable programs help Guatemala’s vulnerable children gain vital skills and break the cycle of poverty. Its Culture of Reading Program (CORP) improves the quality of education in rural Guatemalan schools and increases literacy for indigenous Mayan children.

The Culture of Reading Program (CORP) improves the quality of education in rural schools, increases literacy for the Mayan children and aims to address inadequate teacher training and materials.  The Readers’ Choice grant will help provide 65 primary-school teachers in rural Guatemala with training in effective reading instruction and 2,340 books for their classrooms.

For more details on the grants and organizations check out our press release and congrats to both of these wonderful organizations!

Invisible children recently told me that we have 20 days left to “raise” 100,000 books.

And I was like, “What? You want me to hold a box of books up over my head”?

Ok, Ok… I understand the program: thousands of IC supporters across the country are feverishly collecting books which they ship to Better World Books’ warehouse where they are sold to generate funds to promote the peace process in Northern Uganda as well as rebuild and strengthen local schools.

And yes, whoever “raises” the most books wins a free trip to Uganda. But that is actually not important in the grand scheme of things. The real power of this program is the combined efforts of hundreds of book drives across the country.

So “raising books” is really just a fancy-I-really-want-to-be-hip way of saying “books collected are sold to raise money, raise awareness, promote peace, rebuild schools”. I get it. I just think it sounds silly.

But I’ll tell you what’s not silly: the impact that we can make if we actually hit the goal of this book drive: For every book “raised”, Invisible Children is able to fly a child to the moon.

That last sentence is totally false, I wrote it to see if you were paying attention. Seriously, though, the impact of your book drives are huge. To give you an idea of just how huge your raising is: (just nine boxes of accepted books raises enough money to for a year-long scholarship for a child in Northern Uganda. 9 boxes = 1 scholarship. 90 boxes = 10 scholarships. 900 boxes… That’s a big deal.

So maybe you gave up on the book drive because you were out of the running for the contest, or maybe you got worn out by last semester, or just maybe you didn’t have a clue what “raising” books meant. But now that you have read all this, you are out of excuses. Work hard this last 3 weeks to collect and ship lots of books. The goal is definitely achievable, and Invisible Children is counting on YOU!

–Aaron

Chase Bank is giving away $5 million to various charities through its Community Giving program and our partner Invisible Children is in the running.  Cast your vote AND help spread the word.

Cast your vote AND help spread the word.

Great news!  As you probably already know, promoting literacy has always been woven into the fabric of our business.  Now we’re delighted to announce we’ve given an ownership stake to our non-profit literacy partners.   Yup…we’ve granted Incentive Stock Options to these partners – as far as we know, a first for social enterprise.

The purpose of the plan, put together with the help of our primary investor, Good Capital, is to ensure that our literacy partners can have a stake in and share in our financial success.

We’ve put aside roughly 5% of the company for use in stock option grants to an initial group of five literacy partners (with potential to add others in the future):  Books for Africa, Invisible Children, Room To Read, WorldFund and the National Center for Family Literacy.

One of our fearless leaders Xavier Helgesen puts it best:  “We created Better World Books to show that it is possible to do good while at the same time run a successful company.  Our literacy partners are essential to our mission, and we want them to flourish.  Today’s announcement ensures that as our company grows, our partners will too.”

Check out the press release to get all the details. Or read more about it at Change.org.

We are so proud of what your support has been able to do for our Non-Profit partners.  So far we have:

With your help, Books for Africa, Invisible Children, Worldfund, Room to Read and the National Center for Family Literacy are doing amazing things to increase literacy around the world!

Thanks!  And please keep spreading the word!

Invisible Children has linked up their amazing “Schools for Schools” program with Better World Books, and the results are sure to be spectacular.  Haven’t heard about IC?  Well, they’re an amazing group of folks in SoCal who have created a documentary and mobilized a nation’s worth of students to help partner schools in Uganda.  Why Uganda?

” The war in northern Uganda has been called the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today. For the past 23 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) have been waging a war that has left nearly two million innocent civilians caught in the middle. The GoU’s attempt to protect its citizens from this rebel militia has largely failed, leaving an entire generation of youth that has never known peace.

Since Invisible Children: Rough Cut was filmed in 2003, night commuting has ended for the children of northern Uganda. For the past few years, the region has been closer to peace than ever before. From June 2006 to March 2008 in Juba, Sudan, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) engaged in a series of peace talks in order to end the conflict. These peace talks, supported by special envoys from the United States and other nations, allowed for the longest period of peace in northern Uganda’s 23-year war. “

Unbelievable right? It gets better. Through the schools for schools program they managed to raise over $3 million last year (wow!). Now, not only can students in the program raise money for schools, they can run book drives as well. In addition to the millions of dollars raised, schools are going on a full assault getting stacks of books for those in need. One school in Vermont will have shipped 30,000 books by the end January. That’s just one school amongst the hundreds across the US that are involved in the project.

The international organization created the revolutionary fundraising program in 2006 in response to the need for quality schools in northern Uganda – schools that have been destroyed by displacement, rebel occupation and lack of funding due to the 22-year war. Schools for Schools uses an innovative online social community to help students see where their money is going and connect to different projects, fundraising ideas, and supporters. Within its first year, students rallied together and raised over $3 million.

The World’s Biggest Book Drive will build upon Schools for Schools’ innovative fundraising strategy and will help complete the ambitious projects at Invisible Children’s eleven partner schools in northern Uganda.  Through a Partnership with Better World Books, a global bookstore that harnesses the power of capitalism to bring literacy and opportunity to people around the world, over 1,000 student groups will be invited to join the movement by leading community-wide book drives.

A winner of the 2008 Fast Company Social Capitalist Award, Better World Books is a fast-growing social enterprise that collects donated books and sells them online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide.  Through partnerships with more than 1,600 college campuses and 900 libraries nationwide, Better World Books has generated over $4.7 million for its non-profit, library and college partners, donated 1 million books to literacy programs globally, and diverted nearly 13.5 million books from landfills.

The World’s Biggest Book Drive will utilize the passion, creativity and hard work of student groups inspired by the GO documentary, and the technical and logistical expertise of Better World Books, to collect, sell and donate used books in support of schools in northern Uganda.

“What’s incredible about this program is that it relies on the most unlikely donors – high school and college students – to raise the money, allowing them to believe that they have what it takes,” said Laren Poole, Invisible Children co-founder and GO Director. “At the end of the fundraising and book drive competition, the top students have the chance to visit their school in Uganda to meet students their own age. It’s a story come full circle.”

Xavier Helgesen, a co-founder of Better World Books, believes the partnership with Invisible Children is unique in that “it allows ordinary citizens across the U.S. and Canada to support lasting peace in Uganda by donating a national resource in vast supply in both countries – used books.  Books cluttering up their closets, stuffed under their beds, and collecting dust on their shelves will be transformed into dollars to support literacy and international development.”

22 all-expenses-paid trips to northern Uganda will be awarded to student groups that raise the most money, collect the most books, and offer the most creative ideas for propelling the Schools four Schools movement.

The World’s Biggest Book Drive starts on September 8, 2008, and will end on January 31st, 2009.

About Invisible Children, Inc. Established in 2005, Invisible Children is a social, political, and global movement using the transformative power of a story to change lives. By inspiring youth culture to value creativity, idealism, and sacrifice, the movement fuels the most effective, adaptable, and innovative programs in the world. Invisible Children, Inc. was formed after the release of the film “Invisible Children: Rough Cut”, which documents a war in northern Uganda in which children are abducted by a rebel army and forced to fight as child soldiers. Currently, Invisible Children is putting 740 kids through school and employs more than 250 men and women living in this war-torn region, with plans to see that number grow. These programs on the ground were developed by the people of northern Uganda and seek to improve the quality of life for individuals through quality education, enhanced learning environments and innovative economic opportunities. www.invisiblechildren.com.