Nsipi School, Malawi … She had seen pictures of excitement, and the early stories about the distribution of the textbooks. Brielle Read, a teenager from Austin, Texas spent a lot of time working on her Girl Scout project that resulted in 33,000 school textbooks being sent to Malawi. Her family lived and breathed textbooks for several months, and her church, the Western Hills Church of Christ had worked feverishly to raise the needed $38,000.00 to ship all of the books to Malawi. Working with the Malawi Project and the Namikango Mission in southern Malawi the books were shipped, arrived safely and were being distributed to schools all over the nation. By the time Brielle and a group from the Western Hills Church reached Malawi in August 2013, over 1,000 schools had already received textbooks for their libraries.
Eyes See and Ears Hear
Seeing pictures, and hearing stories about books going to Africa are one thing, but being there and experiencing it is far different. On this bright, warm, Tuesday morning, Brielle and the group from Western Hills met one of the first school administrators to receive books for their library, and saw and heard the importance of these books to Malawi schools.
“It is impossible to explain the excitement experienced in Malawi when books of any kind arrive,” reports Richard Stephens of the Malawi Project. “They have so few, and the arrival of these 33,000 books brought nationwide attention and TV coverage because of their impact. It was a high moment for those of us who work there to have Brielle and her group see first hand what these books mean to the schools. We are very proud of her, and her Western Hills family for their contribution to Malawi.”