The Age of Fundraisers

I call this, "The Age of Fundraisers". I could easily attend fundraising luncheons and dinners nearly every single weekend, because I receive numerous invitations to these events, which seem to have become more frequent. When I go to the grocery store, I often pass girl scouts by the entrance selling their cookies, or other organizations selling sundry goods, and when it's my turn at the at the check-out lane, the cashier asks if I'd like to make a donation to the-cause-of-the-month. Got kids? Then you know they are always bringing home fundraising catalogs from school, selling cookie dough, wrapping paper, magazine subscriptions, and all sorts of stuff you really don't need. You need not even venture from home to be asked to give because donation requests also arrive in the mail and by telephone. So the last thing anyone wants in a blog is to be asked to donate to yet another cause. But I did want to mention that I made a small donation to the Botswana Book Project, which is part of the larger organization, Books For Africa, and received a wonderful thank you letter from the director, Patrick Plonski. He quotes from the speech of The Honorable Kofi Annan, the former U.N. Secretary General and Honorary Co-chair of Books For Africa's Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative:

"Books for Africa is a simple idea, but its impact is transformative. For us, I have said before, literacy is quite simply the bridge from misery to hope. Literacy provides the keys to learning and empowers the individuals to expand their choices and opportunities for the future. In doing so, it is a crucial bulwark against poverty and a necessary foundation for sustainable development. For everyone everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right. Over the last two decades, Books For Africa has made tremendous progress helping to extend this right in Africa."

Literacy and books may well be the bridge from misery to hope. I do believe that books have the power to transform and improve lives. That's why I made a donation. I hope you will consider making a donation to Books for Africa.