The impetus for creating US-ACF came  20 years ago when our founders Mark Grashow and Sheri Salzberg saw firsthand the troubling lack of books in so many schools in Africa. In our early years our focus was on collecting book donations here in the U.S. and shipping them to partners in Africa. Building on that successful track record we continue to “up our game” especially by growing efforts to support teachers and librarians.

One of USACF’s biggest priorities has always been putting books in the hands of school children. Since 2003, American schools have donated more than 3 million library books and textbooks to USACF. These books along with school supplies, toys, clothing, sports equipment and school furniture have been delivered to more than a 1,000 schools and refugee camps in Zimbabwe, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Yemen, Somaliland, and Jordan.

USACF president, Mark Grashow, has visited 100+ schools and has helped inspire thousands of young people to be part of our work. Teaching a child that they have the power to impact on another person’s life, is a lesson that lasts a lifetime. Over 400 volunteers have worked with us loading the books and supplies into seagoing containers. We are delighted to work with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Education which provide financial and logistical support, enabling us to distribute over two hundred thousand books last year.  Requests for books and school supplies keep accelerating. Next year we aim to double the pace of shipments!

Getting books to schools that are desperately short of them is just the beginning. We work hard to foster a love of reading and to help young people fall in love with reading. And, since all of the high stakes examinations are in English, giving students the tools to improve their fluency, reading, writing, and comprehension can make all the difference.

 Hands-On Reading! (HOR)

HOR is our network of 16 schools across Sierra Leone where we support libraries and literacy programming. Each site now has an HOR librarian and we work with the cohort continuously – they report to us monthly and we supply coaching and educational resources on a continuing basis. Together, we are working to bring best practices and innovative approaches to building and nurturing a culture of literacy at each school. Next year we aim to train our librarians to bring educational technology to their schools.

Our flagship “We Yone Learning Centre” is headquarters for the HOR program. We took on the logistically challenging task of bringing all 16 librarians to We Yone (transport can be tough in Sierra Leone!) for training and workshops in recent years, with plans for more. We are excited by our upcoming Sister Schools program which aims to bring more resources and support to each of the 16 schools. 

A proven model, ready to launch in more countries

We have learned a lot from running our “Hands-on Reading!” program, mentoring and training the 16 HOR librarians, and distributing well over 100,000 books across Sierra Leone. We are optimistic that with USACF’s growing donor support we will be able to bring these successful programs to other countries, opening the door for thousands and thousands of people to experience the magic of reading and the love of literacy.