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Hello APLA Members! If you're stuck for a Valentine's Day gift for a special person in your life, why not consider making a donation in that person's name to the Grow a Library fund? You will be giving the gift of literacy, and how cool is that? This year APLA is raising funds to support the Alicho Wuriro Reading Room in Ethiopia. Please see below for information on this initiative. Donations can be made to http://www.codecan.org/get-involved/adopt-library/find-library/alicho-wuriro-reading-room and a gift card can be printed from the Grow a Library webpage at http://apla.ca/?q=growalibrary (Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the PDF). Thanks from your Grow a Library Committee! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Alicho Wuriro Reading Room - Help Make a Dream Come True in 2013! "If you can learn to read and write, you can learn to do, and be, anything." This is the simple yet transformative idea behind CODE (the Canadian Organization for Development through Education) which has been supporting literacy since 1959. On behalf of the Grow a Library Committee and in partnership with CODE, I am pleased to announce that APLA has adopted the Alicho Wuriro Reading Room in Ethiopia as the focus of this year's fundraising project. This is the seventh year since the Grow a Library program was launched and APLA members have so far generously supported libraries in Mali, Tanzania and Ethiopia. The Alicho Wuriro Reading Room is a dream waiting to take flight, with our help. Located in the district of the same name and close to the city of Worabe, the reading room is for now an empty concrete building provided and supported by the local community which dreams of better opportunities through education for all of its people. By supporting this reading room, APLA will help CODE provide students, teachers and other members of this densely populated and generally underserved and under-resourced region of Africa with access to much-needed reading materials, in English and local languages. APLA's support will also go toward staff training as well as furnishings for the new library. Our objective is to raise $2500, between now and the end of May, and we hope to do this with the enthusiastic support of all our members! Every contribution big or small will be gratefully accepted and will help us achieve our goal. Please consider making a personal donation of $10, $20 or $50 to the fund. Donations can be made at http://www.codecan.org/get-involved/adopt-library/find-library/alicho-wuriro-reading-room Alternatively, you can help by undertaking a fundraising activity in your library. Here are a few simple ideas for fundraising from Grow a Library Committee members! From Samantha Neukomm, Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority (Halifax): "When I saw the name 'Grow A Library Fund Committee' my first thought was plants. A public library I worked in previously in BC had a fundraiser that sold seeds. Gardeners loved it and it was successful. Vesey's (from PEI) offers something similar." http://www.veseys.com/ca/en/about/veseys/fundraising From Robin Isley, New Brunswick Public Library Service: "What about plain old donation jars/boxes that libraries could have out on their counters or in staff rooms? ... Libraries could create a book display about different cultures and set out the box for donations." From Lorraine Jackson, Memorial University: "Bouquet of flowers - ask for a donation of a bouquet from a local florist, then have your fellow employees buy tickets for a chance to win it or have a silent auction. Plant sale - ask people to donate small plants or cuttings from plants and sell them. Spare Change Jar at your desk or in the Staff room - email your coworkers and ask for donations. Put the jar next to the coffee machine...I always pitch it to my bibliophile friends to make a donation as a gift for birthdays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, end-of-year Teacher Appreciation, ... etc. From Jocelyne Thompson, University of New Brunswick: "I am planning to hold a mini book sale here at UNB as our contribution to the fundraising, say a truck or two of books with the sale lasting a week or so. I'm hoping that's an idea that some may pick up as easy to do and quick to turnaround. " For more information on CODE, please see http://www.codecan.org/ And thank you in advance for your support of this worthy initiative!