Teen’s bar mitzvah project to help literacy in Kenya

By PHIL GARBER Managing Editor

MOUNT OLIVE TWP. – Matthew Wille has an abiding love of books and the Flanders teen plans to extend his interest to promote literacy in Kenya.

Wille, 13, is collecting books and funds as part of the community action requirement for his bar mitzvah. The coming of age ceremony is scheduled for March 10 at Temple Hatikvah in Flanders.

“I love to read and I took this challenge,” said Wille, a seventh grader at Mount Olive Middle School who said the Harry Potters are among his favorites.

Wille lives on Falcon Road with his parents, Vicki and Chuck and his sister, Julia, 9.

He said on Saturday that he wanted to find a way to combine his love or reading and helping people in need. He began to check out the Internet and came across an organization known as the Global Literacy Project, a New Jersey-based non profit organization that distributes books to developing nations.

Wille contacted the organization and hopes to collect 1,000 books and $4,000 in donations to pay the shipping costs. Global Literacy Project will in turn donate 19,000 books to the 1,000 collected by Willie. All the books will be sent to Chamisri section of Kenya.

Books can be children’s books reference books such as dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias published within the last 10 years textbooks also no older than 10 years, for grades K-12 and math and literary classics up to 30 years old.

“This organization really stood out and it looked like a really good organization to donate books to,” Wille said. “I know this are of Kenya has no library and no access to books at all.”

Mrs. Wille said Global Literacy also may help to pay for her son to visit Kenya after the library is developed.

Book Fair

The Barnes and Noble in Ledgewood will be hosting a book fair from 2 to 6 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 10, when a percentage of all purchases will be donated to the Wille’s book drive. People also can buy vouchers from Wille to be used toward books for the drive.

The Falcon Road youth has posted notices of his plan at his school and synagogue. His mother, Vicki, has spread the word at Overlook Hospital where she is the blood bank coordinator. And Wille’s father, Chuck, also has posted fliers at Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in Chester, where he is a rehab assistant.

So far, Wille has raised about $100 and collected about 200 books.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him,” Mrs. Wille said of her son.

Youths approaching their bar mitzvahs at Temple Hatikvah have completed different community service projects in the past. One child collected used cell phones for the Rachel Coalition against domestic abuse. Another is collecting funds for the Alzheimer’s Foundation while another candidate for bar mitzvah volunteers at the Merry Heart Nursing Home in Roxbury, Mrs. Wille said.

For more information on the Global Literacy Project, visit www.glpinc.org.

According to its website, the Global Literacy Project was started in 1999 by a group of individuals from Kenya, Nigeria, India, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Croix and Dominica in the Caribbean, South Africa and the U.S.

The group’s initial project was shipment of 17,000 books in summer 2000 to Africa. Since then, it has expanded into the Caribbean and plans to send books to Asia.

Since its founding, the organization says it has shipped out nearly one million volumes of books and journals and established several multimedia learning centers. Volumes shipped have included complete sets of scientific journals such as Nature Science Journal of Chromatography Chemical Abstracts Lancet Journal of Biochemistry Cell.

In 2002 the organization created an ongoing program of 10 full scholarships for 10 economically underprivileged rural students for attendance at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya.

Countries it hopes to help in the next five years include Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, India, Dominica, Grenada, Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

(Source: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17558916&BRD=1918&PAG=461&dept_id=506840&rfi=6)