Lisa Crate is one of those people who makes the African Library Project successful. Her exceptional drive, organizational skills and can-do attitude provided the leadership to inspire Carl Goetz Middle School in Jackson, New Jersey to ship 5,070 books to Botswana, starting 5 new primary school libraries, a new ALP record. As the school librarian at Goetz, Lisa knows how important access to books is for students to learn.

Like most of our super successful book drives, Lisa’s success was based on her ability to get lots of people involved. Using the ALP logo, Lisa designed and distributed flyers for the teachers, parents, and students that explained why Africa needs books and what Goetz planned to do about it. She also included criteria from the ALP website for the types of books needed. Then she updated the student body on the progress of the book drive on Goetz Live. The Character Education Committee helped collect the books and many of Goetz’s classes helped to sort them. Goetz even reached out to local businesses asking for book and monetary donations. When they reached 2,000 books, Lisa said, “we are doing great, but I think we can do even better!”

To take care of shipping costs, Goetz raised over $1,600 in some creative ways. The Drama Club did a traveling show, Aladdin, throughout the district. At each performance, the students were asked to bring used books to donate as their price of admission. In addition, a Mother’s Day plant sale to collect additional funds was so successful, the excess was used to buy books to add to the collection.

Finally, not only did Goetz do an amazing job collecting books, the Goetz students learned a lot about Africa in the process. Lisa offered lesson plans to those who were interested in language arts and literature, social studies, and geography and cross-cultural understanding. An educational win for students on both sides of the Atlantic!

Lisa will be the recipient of the Promising Practices Award presented by the Character Education Partnership (CEP), a national organization for character education. Lisa will be presenting her work with the African Library Project in October in Arlington, Virginia. Her work will also be showcased nationally through CEP publications to be shared with other schools throughout the country.

Congratulations to Goetz and Lisa for their incredible accomplishments!