4/22/2015

AbeBooks Fills "Empty Bookcases" for South Sudan!

A generous donation started the ILAB Pop Up Book Fair week!  Even before the ILAB Pop Up Book Fairs appear across the world on UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day 2015, Richard Davies of AbeBooks announced that AbeBooks would make the generous donation of US$ 2000 towards ILAB's project to help fund UNESCO's vital literacy work in South Sudan.

South Sudan, the world's newest state, is a troubled place indeed. Literacy is a way through some of the problems that beset the children in South Sudan and thanks to AbeBooks' generous gift, 190 sets of children's “Bouba and Zaza” books especially written and published for African children will be put into South Sudanese schools.

"This generous donation by AbeBooks will make a real difference to the children in South Sudan". ILAB President Norbert Donhofer said yesterday. "In affluent countries it is so easy to take books and literacy for granted. However for those of us who work with books everyday of our lives, we realise that the debt we owe to those who taught us to read and to the early books we read from is incalcuable. We are indebted to AbeBooks for getting behind the ILAB booksellers and UNESCO in their work towards a more literate world."

On April 23rd at ILAB Pop Up Book Fairs throughout the world booksellers will display posters depicting Empty Bookcases and invite visitors and colleagues to mark the day by "buying" a symbolic spine. Spine by spine the bookcases will be filled. Spine by spine literacy gets closer to reality for a child in South Sudan.

To mark AbeBooks's donation ILAB will present to AbeBooks representatives two Bookcase Posters each filled with $1000 worth of symbolic spines. While attending the ILAB Pop Up Book Fairs in Tokyo and Portland Colin Laird and Jessica Doyle of AbeBooks will formally be presented the filled Bookcase Posters. What better? A full bookcase is surely one of the best symbols of literacy. We hope that many others will join ILAB in this practical celebration of UNESCO's World Book and Copyright Day and buy a spine at a Pop Up Book Fair or online via the UNESCO website and thereby help make literacy a reality for the children in South Sudan.

Support literacy! Make a donation to UNESCO now!

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/wbcd


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