Angel partners with Compassionate Travel Foundation 

PRESS RELEASE   

May 15, 2010—Angel Says: Read is partnering with the Compassionate Travel Foundation to give people a way to send books to Belize from the United States.

The Compassionate Travel Foundation (www.compassionatetravelfoundation.org) was founded by Americans Marilyn Perks and Dennis Taylor after they traveled to Belize in February 2008 with suitcases filled with donated eyeglasses. It has grown into an organization that encourages travelers to be of service wherever they visit, focusing primarily on the empowerment of Mayan women and children in Central America.

Its Books for Belize Project enables people to send books to Belize.

“The Compassionate Travel Foundation is pleased to partner with Angel Says: Read,” Taylor said. “Angel Says: Read inspires travelers to take books to Belize. Through the mutual cooperation of both organizations we can offer individuals two methods of getting books in the hands of the Belizean people.”

Through a shipping partnership, CTF is able to help Angel mail books to Belize.

Jackie Spinner, executive director of Angel Says: Read, said this will enable interested donors who may not be traveling to Belize to participate by sending books to a warehouse in Texas.

“A number of people have asked how they can donate boxes of books,” she said. “Until now, the only means we've had to get the books to Belize is sending them with travelers or if I have a trip planned and can bring them in my suitcase.”

People interested in mailing books to Belize will need to cover the cost of shipping them by media rate through the U.S. Postal Service. CTF has partnership with The Word at Work in Texas, which then will ship the books free of additional charge with its containers of donations headed south to Belize.

CTF books are distributed to Mayan schools. Angel Says: Read books will continue to be donated to the Belize National Library Service and the University of Belize, in keeping with is primary mission.

“We share a similar mission,” Spinner said. “We want travelers to think about giving back to the communities they visit. But not everyone can travel to Belize. They still want to help. Now they can.”

According to its Web site, CTF encourages “compassionate travelers to...build relationships, ask questions respectfully, listen openly, and return home to network and connect the formerly unreachable resources to the person or group in need. It is amazingly easy for the compassionate traveler to make a huge impact on the lives of struggling people while enhancing his or her own travels and gaining the rich rewards of offering a hand up.”

Angel Says: Read was founded by a former Washington Post newspaper reporter and book author as an avenue for tourists to recycle their vacation reading material. The official launch was announced in November 2009 at the Leo Bradley Library in Belize. Angel Says: Read had its U.S. launch in October 2009 in Washington, D.C., with the ambassador of Belize, H.E. Nestor Mendez.

 “The libraries in Belize genuinely need books, and this is an easy way for tourists to help promote literacy,” said Jackie Spinner, who created the organization earlier this year while living in Belize.

Spinner is currently in Iraq but has continued promoting literacy in Belize through a network of contacts that includes lodge owners, teachers, media personalities and officials at the University of Belize.

The literacy group’s motto is: Read it. Leave it. In a cultural nod, Angel Says: Read also has adopted a Belizean Kriol proverb to signify its mission of encouraging literacy one book at a time. That proverb is “One-one okro full basket,” meaning that gradually, tasks are accomplished. The name, Angel Says: Read, is a play on the title of the 1948 collection of poetry by Sir Edney Cain titled “And the Angel Says: Write.” Cain was the first managing director of the Belize Monetary Authority, the first governor of the Central Bank and the first Belizean resident ambassador to the United States.

Donors interested in sending books by mail should first contact Angel Says: Read, which will help identify where the books will be donated in Belize.

On the top the box, donors should put their return address c/o Angel Says: Read. They should be mailed to:

 The Word at Work

1400 Wolflin Ave.

Amarillo, Texas 79109 

On the side of the box, put the name, location and phone number of the destination, which Angel Says: Read will provide to donors.

Students on Spring Break bring books to Belize 

PRESS RELEASE  

May 1, 2010—U.S. college students and their professors who traveled to Belize for Spring Break this year donated more than 100 books to the public libraries through Angel Says: Read.

Other travelers brought pamphlets and made personal pitches to local businesses on behalf of Angel.

“I am so grateful that people are willing to be our ambassadors,” said Jackie Spinner, executive director of Angel Says: Read. “I started this little project almost a year ago, never imagining that so many people would be interested in helping this beautiful country.”

Merdith Buchman, a former school librarian from Wasilla, Alaska, lobbied businesses in Hopkins Village, an area of Belize where Angel Says: Read would like to expand.

“As a former school librarian, I fully support the goals of Angel Says: Read and would be very willing to help support your program,” Buchman said.

This spring she took pamphlets to Belize, where she owns a small second home, and invited Hopkins Inn, Jaguar Reef Resort, All Season Guest House and Thongs to join the collection effort.

Steven D. Wilt, associate professor and chair of Biology at Bellarmine University (www.bellarmine.edu), encouraged the 27 students in his marine biology class to bring books on their Spring Break trip to the Cayes in Belize.

Wilt and his students left more than 80 books at Caye Casa on San Pedro, an Angel Says: Read participating business.

The students and faculty who participated included: Evan Kuhl, Caitlin Clark, Michelle Johnston, Evan Wilt, Samantha Clark, Jen Wilt, Steven Wilt,

           

Gabby Atkinson, Edie Carson, Katie Chal, Maria Chal, Helen Cooper, Sharon Davis, Leslie Delk, Ashley Flood, Christy Hinton, Sharen Kemp, Kurt Lederman, Kevin Mercer, Brittney Mills, Lucas Moss, Nathan O’Donoghue, Alex Perez, Norbert Rosario, Taylor Shaw, Kirby Stephens, Michael Whitman, Megan Williamson, Zach Wohl, Zack Zeillmann, Tom Bennett, Barb Bennett, David Porta, Nancy Porta and Emily Porta.

Angel Says: Read was founded by Spinner, a former Washington Post newspaper reporter and book author as an avenue for tourists to recycle their vacation reading material. She is currently in Iraq but uses a network in Belize to continue to expand Angel in Belize.

“This spring really showed me how vital it is for us to tap the network of college students who come to Belize on Spring Break,” Spinner said. “Many of them are looking for a service component to their trips or are coming to Belize through educational programs. This is an easy way for the students to give back while they are in Belize.”

Angel Says: Read has placed strategic drop-boxes in major tourist centers throughout the country. The Belize Tourism Board has officially endorsed the project.

The board of directors for Angel Says: Read (www.angelsaysread.com) includes such Belizean notables as author Felicia Hernandez; Lawrence Vernon, principal librarian of the Belize National Library Service; Evan “Mose” Hyde, general manager of KREM; Montserrat Casademunt, publisher of Cubola Productions; Neulin Nelson Villanueva, dean of St. John’s College Junior College; and Consuela Godfrey, president of the Belize Reading Council.

 

 

Angel donates books in Iraq 
                       

PRESS RELEASE  

April 21, 2010—Angel Says: Read made its first donation in Iraq as it considers changing its name to reflect a more global effort to encourage travelers to donate their books to the communities they visit on business or vacation.

Angel collected about 100 books from the USA Today Baghdad bureau and delivered them to The American University of Iraq—Sulaimani.

Angel Says: Read Executive Director, Jackie Spinner, has been soliciting donations from the bureau chiefs in Baghdad as they consolidate or close their bureaus. She also has been working for three months on a formal request to the U.S. military to donate used books from its bases and outposts to the Iraqi public libraries.

“This is one of the reasons we are considering changing our name,” said Spinner, who is currently living and working in Iraq. “Our primary mission will always be Belize. But I'd like to find ways to help get books to libraries in other parts of the world. There is no reason why this couldn't or shouldn't be an international effort.”

Aamer Madhani, the former Baghdad bureau chief for USA Today, donated the books, maps and magazines to Angel Says: Read when he closed the newspaper's bureau this month and left Iraq for a new foreign affairs reporting assignment in Washington, D.C.

Dlovan Barwari, who is a media specialist for Spinner at AUI-S and was a former correspondent for the Washington Post in Mosul, drove to Baghdad to collect the books, which Madhani had left at the Iraq Oil Report bureau. Barwari then brought the books to Sulaimani, about five hours north of Baghdad.

“This is the way we do it,” Spinner said. “We ask around, find people who will help and through a very informal network of people interested in promoting literacy, make it happen.”

Spinner said it is important for travelers to think about donating books wherever they go even if an organization such as Angel Says: Read does not have a formal collection network.

 “Just take your books to the nearest public library,” she said. “I would imagine that very few libraries in the developing world would turn you down.”

Spinner is focused next on petitioning the U.S. military to donate books its books to the Iraqi public libraries as troops stand down this summer and leave the country.

“Generous Americans have donated hundreds of thousands, if not more, books to the troops in the past seven years,” she said. “We can't just discard that reading material. Many Iraqis need English-language books and texts through their libraries or universities. I want the Americans to donate those books. This is an apolitical cause. Whether you supported the war or not, we have books, books that need libraries, books that Iraqis are eager to read. This is just the right thing to do.”

 

                                                     

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