Update on the Peterson Container
PEN Trust friend, Mary Jo Peterson, has a special place in her heart for the people of East Africa. In 2001, she visited Tanzania in order to get a better idea of the background and culture of her families’ foster child’s home country of Uganda. This year PEN Trust was fortunate to be the recipient of a forty foot container of books from Books For Africa donated by her family.
Math books being sorted by title.
Science books – this consignment had large numbers of single title books. We chose to have a smaller number of schools as recipients for this container so that schools may receive larger classroom sets.
Example of one title - Life Science. Each secondary school received over 60 copies.
The same occurred in math – multiple copies for each school.
Look all these great anthologies for primary age Reading – priceless!
People often ask us why does it take a month to sort a container – why don’t you just deliver the boxes straight away? Here is a good example of how actually touching each book makes a difference – the three piles of books all came from Secondary General Library – but when we looked at each book we re-assigned some of them to primary and others to post secondary levels. English is often the third language for most students so the levels often need to be adjusted.
Books we sent to primary schools…
Books for secondary level…
Books we sent to Universities…
The container is stamped, sorted and ready for distribution and pick up.
Breakdown of book distribution -
NAME OF SCHOOL # OF BOOKS
St. John’s University 962
Canon Andrea Mwaka Secondary 1,137
Itigi Secondary School 959
Jubilee Secondary School 1,105
Kilimanjaro Academy 1,076
Mlewa Secondary School 1,026
Sanza Secondary School 42
Canon Andrea Mwaka Primary 1,002
Eseriani Primary School 224
Future School Primary 537
Holy Trinity Primary 924
Mlowa Primary School 871
Mwitikira Primary School 887
Sayuni Primary School 1,019
Young Jai Primary School 1,015
Dodoma Regional Library 430
Individuals 366
Msalato Theological College 186
Mvumi Hospital 38
Not Placed Yet 204
PEN Trust 181
School for Visually Impaired 7
St. Gabriel’s Technical School 111
VETA Technical School 36
14,345 Books
The total number is lower than average since there was 7 ½ pallets of school supplies from NW Ohio. See story in the Archives.