In the largest collaborative effort to date for an ALP book drive, Xilinx Inc. of San Jose, California joined three local schools, and Girl Scout Isabelle Nguyen, to collect an ALP record 5515 books. This astounding effort will establish 5 primary school lending libraries in Botswana as part of our 100 Libraries for Botswana project.

Xilinx is our first corporate sponsor and the story of how this partnership snowballed is inspiring. 8th grader Austen Blease approached Xilinx, his dad’s employer, to ask if they would be willing to pay for the shipping of the books he was collecting at his middle school for the African Library Project. Xilinx responded enthusiastically. Next, Austen’s brother, Adam, decided to initiate an African Library Project book drive at his high school. Again, Xilinx was pleased to help with the shipping costs. The local elementary school heard about the project and decided to organize its own book drive. Meanwhile, the daughter of Xilinx employee Thuy Do, Isabelle Nguyen, was earning her Girl Scout Silver Award by doing a book drive. Not only did Xilinx pay to ship all these book drives, they organized their own internal book drive to help start a fifth library! Xilinx’s shipping department supplied all the boxes, picked up the books and palletized them, then took them to the post office to ship. What a fantastic community collaboration of resources!

Here are the Xilinx Five and their African partners.

1. Union Middle School - Newlook Primary School in Lobatse, Botswana
2. Leigh High School - Magoriapitse Primary School in Magoriapitse, Botswana
3. Oster Elementary School - Matloklakgang Primary School in Kanye, Botswana
4. Girl Scout Isabelle Nguyen - Mahotshwane Primary School in Mahotswane, Botswana
5. Xilinx Inc. - Motsateng Primary School in Kanye, Botswana

This story would not be complete without mentioning the amazing organizational dynamo, Tina Blease, who is Austen and Adam’s mom. Tina was the glue that put it all together with a big smile constantly on her face.

Thank you so much to Patty Nation at Xilinx, the schools, families, students and volunteers, as well as Xilinx Inc. for you amazing contributions and efforts in promoting literacy in Africa. 2276 students and 86 teachers in Botswana and all the lives that they will touch during their lifetimes will benefit from you gift of books.