Hello and a big thank you for taking the time to read more about the great Sierra Leonean book collection - a word from President Bai Koroma on our work

“Today, our freedom is threatened by ignorance, illiteracy, the scarcity of books and libraries, and the reluctance to build a reading culture. We should confront head-on this challenge to our freedom. Let us continue to draw inspiration from Equiano (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano) and free ourselves from the chains of ignorance. Build on Books is making a serious and sustained impact on the lives of thousands of children and women.”
President Bai Koroma 

Build on Books (BOB), the CODEP literacy campaign, is transforming schools in Sierra Leone, where there has been a desperate shortage of books & teachers since the end of the devastating civil war in 2002 . The book stocks in the country were either burnt, destroyed or stolen leaving the libraries with just 20,000 books for the entire population of six million people and none at all in schools. Since May 2009 Build on Books has sent 200,000 books to Sierra Leone to give the children of this English speaking West African country a chance to learn and prosper. Build on Books aims to send further 500,000 books in 2010 to fill schools and libraries including The Equiano Centre in Waterloo.

Our goal for 2010 is to send 500,000 books of every description to Sierra Leone, to re-equip existing community libraries and to establish 250 school libraries.

We need your donations too, to help pay for the book deliveries, to train teachers and to establish literacy resource centres to tackle endemic illiteracy.

If you want to help or find out more please fill out your contact details in this short form and we will get straight back to you.