Unbelievably it only costs £1,250 to build, kit out, supply with books and staff a library in India (for TWO YEARS).

And you can buy a donkey or bicycle drawn library to travel around Africa for just £100. All of this comes from GoodGifts.org, a charitable organisation.

We launched a Twitter campaign, aimed at librarians, to try and raise enough cash to do this.

So many libraries were closing aroundthat time: why not try and open one?

Four of us came together to do this. We started a blog in January 2011, and began asking for donations.

We gave the whole thing a hashtag:

#buyalib

216 emailsabout theproject

Between us, we exchanged:

10blogposts

We wrote:

these were viewed around 2,300 times

resulting in 430 tweets

129 people tweeted using the hashtag

#buyalib

controversythere was a little

donated100 wonderful people

The most common donation was a very generous

In just two weeks we raised a spectacular…

£2420!In just two weeks we raised a spectacular…

HOW MUCH?!

So what is happening now? The Rural Literacy & Health Programme in India are building an extra big library with more books, attached to a school on the edge of a slum in Mysore.

And…The African Educational Trust have created FOUR donkey-drawn libraries to travel around Uganda, Somalia and Sudan.

“The world is full of ambient goodness just waiting for the right idea to make it happen.”Andromeda Yelton

And if buyalib proves anything else, it’s that social media is ace…

thanks for listening!

Images via: PhotofuniaStock XchangeIcon FinderGoodgifts

Read the Buyalib blog at:http://buyindiaalibrary.wordpress.com/

My own blog at:www.thewikiman.org

Or buy your own library! Via:www.GoodGifts.org