Lewisham residents Yinka Ojo, Shaun Condon and Natalie Frost have been collecting thousands of educational books to ship to a village library in Osun State, Nigeria. Books donated from libraries, publishers and generous individuals are destined for the village of Ifon Osun in the Orolu Kingdom, Osun State, Nigeria.
Yinka Ojo has been shipping boxes of books to the library in his home village, called the Orolu Local Government Library, since the early 1990’s. Friend and fellow Lewisham resident, Shaun Condon, got involved with his project in 2011 and in April 2012 they shipped six pallets of books to the Orolu Kingdom - mostly adult fiction and non-fiction.
Since then they have collected and shipped 2,000 children's non-fiction, picture books and school exercise books to the village library with the intention of setting up a children's library in April this year. They will also be running a literacy scheme similar to the Summer Reading Challenge held annually in public libraries all across the UK. Shaun and Natalie have worked for Lewisham and Greenwich libraries respectively in the past and are passionate about promoting literacy in children.
Based on information supplied by Shaun Condon.
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