Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of books do you want? We can find the best value of any book, be it for use in East Africa (always our top priority!), selling online through our partners Better World Books, or as a last resort, recycling it. To find out more about which books are most suitable see here

I've got books - how do I donate them?? Simply fill in our online form by clicking here

Isn't this just more work for UK teachers? Certainly not! UK schools change their text books every couple of years and there is currently nowhere for the old books to go. By providing a good home for old books we're saving them from landfill, and saving UK teachers from having to book a skip. Donating books to us is an easy, convenient and emvironmentally friendly way of disposing them.  

Are you just dumping rubbish in Africa? The truth is, we spend ages sorting through the books we collect to weed out the ones that aren't relevant to their syllabus or have pictures drawn in them. There is a high demand for resources in Tanzania and Uganda and we only send relevant, useful and appropriate books with no political or relgious agenda.

Wait a minute, don't they speak Swahili? Last time I looked, our textbooks were in English. Yes, they do speak Swahili and I'm impressed that you knew that. But all their high school lessons are taught in English! 

Isn't this just stealth colonialism, man? We only take stuff like maths, physics, chemistry and that sort of thing – we avoid history, politics, religion and anything that could be seen as having an agenda.

But like, is it, like Western maths man? Quite possibly. Could you describe to me what any other kind of maths looks like?

Don't they have their own text books? They have some, but not enough. The problem is that it would actually cost more for publishers to print text books than it does for us to take them over there.

Is this just students mucking about? Of course we have fun because if we didn't, nobody would want to help – and it's actually the best way to get people interested in us. Our volunteers do pretty much everything on their own initiative, so while they enjoy themselves, they're building skills like 'being entrepreneurial' and 'organising things'.

It's never going to work. We've been doing it for five years and have distributed 564,000 books already, direct to the schools. We were there when the schools got them, so we kind of know that it does work

Does it really just cost 50p to send a textbook?? It never costs READ more than 50 pence to collect, sort and ship a book from the UK to Tanzania. This figure is not the total spend of READ International divided by the total number of books sent , as we do much more than just collect, sort and ship books. This figure is calculated by only including the relevant collection, sorting and shipping costs associated with books, and then divided by total number of books sent.

Other significant costs which READ spends money in which do not go into calculating the average cost per book are: shipping stationery and sports equipment to East Africa; delivering UK school workshops; refurbishing libraries in East Africa; and purchasing new books in East Africa. Any costs associated with these activities are subtracted from the average cost per calculation.