Books Travel from Vermillion to Africa

Representatives from the 5th grade class at St John the Baptist School in Vermillion recently loaded a vehicle full of used textbooks bound for Africa. Each year, the students load hundreds of pounds of used, out-of-date school textbooks and religious education books to be sorted at the Books for Africa warehouse near downtown St. Paul. The Vermillion books join many others at the warehouse, where they are loaded into huge shipping containers bound for Africa. Poverty and isolation prevent many students in far-off parts of the world from achieving any level of education. Older textbooks actually become a blessing to students and teachers in the most remote, poorest parts of Africa. Since 1988, Books for Africa has sent more than 24 million high-quality text and library books to children and adults in 46 African countries.