Talking up African libraries with strangers in airports...

That's what happened to Marilyn Deer, and the result is a nice article in Scholastic.com about Jordan Nu library in Ghana. You never know what might happen... so give a stranger a warm cup of coffee next time you are traveling, all you favlheads, pull out your latest FAVL newsletter, and ...

A New Library in Ghana
Scholastic.com Sept/Oct 2008
After one of our editors had a chance meeting in an airport (as a silver lining to a long delay), the Instructor staff got some new inspiration from a library in Africa. Marilyn Deer is a retired nurse from Seattle who wanted to share the joy of reading.

As a daughter of missionary parents, she had traveled in Africa and grown up in Nigeria. In 2002, she visited a town in Ghana called Jordan Nu and decided they needed a library—to provide a mosquito-free, well-lit, comfortable and inviting place to read and study. The community provided the difficult manual labor for the building, completed in 2007, after nearly five years construction (with women carrying river water in headpans from half a mile away so the builders could mix cement). Deer provided most of the funding, with some donations from interested friends and family. We will, of course, be sending her books! Below are some photos from the completed project. We hope you find them as inspirational as we do.

To make donations, go to Friends of African Village Libraries, a worthy organization, no matter what, but if you include a note for Jordan Nu, your donation will go there directly.