Tom Warth, the founder of St. Paul-based Books For Africa (BFA), led a group of 25 hikers up Eagle Mountain on the North Shore on Sunday, May 26, to raise $12,000 to send a container of books to children in Togo in Africa.
The money raised will pay to ship 40,000 books to the West African country.
Warth, 83, has led numerous fundraising walks for BFA over the years including a walk across Zanzibar Island off the coast of Africa, across the country of Gambia and up Mount Kilimanjaro. He has also walked across Minnesota, Wisconsin and from the Canadian border to Iowa to promote literacy in Africa.
“I can’t think of a better way to spend Memorial Day weekend than taking in the best views from the highest point in Minnesota all in an effort to help the children of Africa,” Warth said.
Warth, who emigrated to the U.S. from the United Kingdom in 1960, sold his car book publishing company in Osceola, Wisconsin, in 1988 and went on an around-the-world journey. He visited a small library in Jinja, Uganda, the source of the great Nile River. The shelves were mostly empty so Warth had the idea to do something that would have an impact on the students of Africa: end the book famine. It became the mission of Books For Africa.
Books For Africa is the largest shipper of donated text and library books to the African continent, shipping over 44 million books to all 55 countries on the African continent since 1988. In fiscal year 2018 alone, Books For Africa shipped 2.3 million books and 123 computers and e-readers containing 283,000 digital books, to 29 countries. More than $2.2 million was raised last year to ship these books to the students of Africa.
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