
- Kids show off their favorite books at The Hope Library, Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya
[NAIROBI, Kenya] With a little bit of trepidation I made my fifth visit or so to this city’s Kibera slum – a “city within a city” of an estimated 600,000 to 1 million residents living in very challenging conditions – to check up on the state of The Hope Library. The project was started as an audacious dream after my first visit here, a casual daylong tour by a resident (Reuters photographer Noor Khamis) who introduced me to many facets of life here, including some folks who made it know how great was their desire for books, and how dire was their need. (Read original blog post of that encounter here.)
Sure, I’d returned six months ago and seen a church classroom full of kids enjoying our first shipment of books (about 1,200 at that time), but they were mostly picture books and it was a bit of a photo op. The books were kept in a small corner of a temporary space in the St. George Orthodox Church, but the gratitude of the adults and the enthusiasm of the kids pushed me on, to months of cajoling books out of my friends, as well as donations for shipping and other needs.
So began Phase II. In all, I estimate my social network (mainly via Facebook) accounted for about 2,000 more books (carefully selected to feature categories of most value to this community), as well as donations of about $2,750, to help defray shipping and other costs. (Almost all the books were donated, but it’s extremely expensive to ship them. I lucked out by connecting with American Friends of Kenya, and for a much reduced cost, piggybacked many boxes on a shipping container they successfully sent from the States to Kenya last month.)
I couldn’t thank my Facebook crowd enough when I visited today and saw that the enthusiasm for, and commitment toward, The Hope Library had multiplied by 100 in the past six months. Read more


















