ABOUT THE PROJECT

Hi, my name is Amira Horowitz and I am in 12th grade at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights. As a part of the Strnad  Fellowship, I am focusing on Empowering Literacy Abroad and At Home, as a senior year capstone focused on growth, reflection, and community service.

 

This project hopes to help promote literacy's importance and provide free audiobooks and educational activities to excite everyone to love reading.  

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I am partnering with The African Library Project, an organization dedicated to building libraries in African communities where books are scarce. This project holds special meaning for me, as I’ve worked with them before to create a library in South Africa and Uganda, collecting over 2,000 books with the support of my school community. 

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Now, I am working with the students and community of Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights to collect another 1,000 books, this time for Malawi. 

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Growing up, I struggled to learn to read, which helped me understand the transformative power of literacy. My passion for expanding educational resources grew when I learned that in Uganda, a single book can cost an entire month's salary, making it inaccessible for many families. I even had the privilege of traveling to Zambia in the summer of 2021 with Hathaway Brown’s Global Scholars program where I lived with fellow high school students in Zambia and learned about the education system, expanding my global and cultural perspective. 

 

Alongside the book drive, I am hosting literacy workshops to highlight the importance of education and reading. 

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The African Library Project is a fantastic organization that helps empower students like myself to create change, and the funds will help cost the shipping of these books to New Orleans, where they will then travel on a freight boat and reach their new home. Together, we can foster a love for reading and create opportunities that will impact generations to come.