Visitors and authors bring books to Hay
With 39 bookshops and home to the Guardian Hay Festival, you would not expect visitors to bring books into Hay-on-Wye. But from 27th May to 5th June, this is exactly what they will be doing. Anyone can join Alexander McCall Smith in helping to create an exciting visual landmark - a Hay Stack of books for Africa - celebrating the transformative power of books on readers everywhere.
Book Aid International, in association with Alexander McCall Smith's UK publishers Polygon and TimeWarner, is inviting visitors to donate good quality books either by African authors or, ideally, published in Africa and place them onto the physical pile, the 'Hay Stack' situated in the main festival courtyard. It's a great opportunity for Book Aid International to obtain locally relevant material for readers in Africa - books like these are rarely donated to the charity and are in very high demand.
In addition to creating this fantastic stack of books at Hay, Book Aid International is also asking children, authors and illustrators to make a 'buddy' to send to G8 leaders this summer. Each 'buddy' is a decorated figure representing one of the 100 million children worldwide who don't have the chance to go to school. People throughout the UK are taking part in the global 'Send My Friend to School' campaign, hoping that 1 million buddies will be made overall.
Book Aid International has been working for over fifty years to get books into the hands of readers who need them. In the developing world, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, mechanics, farmers and book lovers have their lives enriched by the access to books and information Book Aid International provides.
Visitors to Hay are in a unique position to be able to help raise awareness of the millions of readers across the world who have little or no access to books. Hay's carnival celebration of books and reading is the ideal place to join Book Aid International in celebrating readers all over the world.
Bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith is delighted to be taking part in the initiative: 'Nobody who has been in a developing country and seen the hunger for the printed word could ask what is the point of Book Aid International. The work of this organisation responds to that hunger and brings knowledge and pleasure to many, many thousands of people throughout the world. This is a cause which I recommend to you with all my heart. Please support it'.