Happy 5th Birthday, 100 BOOKS project!

 Last month we saw the 100 Books Project celebrate another birthday.  FIVE years.  Perhpas the quietest year since the project launched in February 2016.  Unfortunately, when the world closed down early in 2020 due to COVID restrictions, so too did many of our plans.  But we still have a lot to celebrate since we first set out to collect 100 books for a school in Salio Village back in 2016.

We smashed our original goal of 100 books and in the first year distributed 772 books to schools in two village schools.

In the second year, we distributed 728 books to two schools in Flores bringing our total to 1500 books.  AND we built a house for a teacher in a fishing village on a small island at the gateway of the Komodo National Park.

In 2018, our third year, we distributed 1650 books including hundreds of copies of Ocean Warriors Plastic in Paradise, a children's book about the problem of marine debris, set in Raja Ampat, West Papua.

By the end of 2019 we had distributed 4000 books to a total of 8 projects and written curriculum for 6 "Ocean Warriors Beach School" lessons, a program devised to help educate school children about the dangers of plastic in our oceans and how we can all be better environmental stewards.  We also distributed 100 Bamboo toothbrushes and cups to the students of Selpele Village - a beautiful collaboration that allowed us to share a plastic free option for one of the many items we find washing up on our beaches.

In 2020, we had big plans.  We had a cash donation that we were going to use to build a "reading garden" at Salio village (where the 100 Books Project first began).  And we had hoped to collaborate with the students there to MAKE their own books.  Unfortunately school closures, restrictions on travel and social distancing requirements made these projects impossible.  We are disappointd that we didn't achieve what we set out to, but mostly we just really, REALLY miss being present in the local communities and spending time with the students and their teachers.

We were able to continue to share books though, and distributed a further 500+ library books, activity books and notebooks to our existing collections brining our grand total up to 4586 books.  And we certainly hope that last year's goals will be realised this year!

As always, thank you to all of you!  Your donations make all of this possible.  You're the best!