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Sabre supporter Pamela Lord greeting visitors to Sabre's booth at the 32nd International Cairo Book Fair, February 2000

Sabre’s international Book Donation Program has continued to expand in size and scope. The book program owes much of its success in 2000 to growing cooperation with established partner organizations, such as the record six shipments sent to Ghanaian partner the Ghana Book Trust, as well as the addition of new partners such as the Austria-based World University Service for programs in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo. Recent highlights on the book front include:

The first Sabre shipments of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Africana, the first encyclopedia to cover the entire history of Africans and the world-wide African Diaspora, was inspired by the dream of the late W.E.B. Du Bois and edited by Harvard Professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah.

With the help of a generous donation from Citigroup to Africana.com, a web site founded by the editors of Africana, 1,000 copies of the encyclopedia, with a retail value of $100,000, have been made available for distribution by Sabre on the African continent. The first such shipments left Sabre’s warehouse in September and October bound for Liberia and Ghana, respectively. A third shipment is planned by year’s end for distribution in South Africa.

Sabre’s collaborator on this project, Minneapolis-based Books for Africa, is distributing a separate allotment of Africana in additional African countries.

Books for Tibetan refugee schools. Sabre is readying a 20-foot sea container of new books and other educational materials for Tibetan refugee schools in India. Sabre anticipates shipping in excess of 10,000 volumes to be distributed among as many as 24 institutions. The shipment will contain K-12 level materials in a range of subjects, specifically chosen from Sabre’s inventory by Sabre’s partner organization, the non-profit Tibetan Children’s Villages (TCV). TCV, a charitable institution for the care of orphaned and destitute Tibetan children directed by Jetsun Pema, younger sister of the Dalai Lama, will distribute the Sabre materials to its residential and day schools and to other sister schools. This will be Sabre’s fourth such shipment dedicated to Tibetan refugee schools.

Tenth year of programs in Croatia and Ukraine. This year marks the tenth year of operations for Sabre-Svitlo and Sabre-Zagreb, two of Sabre’s most successful partner organizations. In Croatia, Sabre-Zagreb is readying plans for targeted book donations to the following institutions, the first four of which were severely damaged by war: Law Faculty, University of Osijek; Zadar Public Library; Inter-University Center, Dubrovnik; City Hospital in Vukovar; and Library of the American and Croatian Friendship Society.

In Ukraine, Sabre-Svitlo has been recognized for its important work to increase open access to information with a generous grant from the Soros-funded International Renaissance Foundation. The $50,000 grant supports the selection and targeted distribution of scholarly literature in the humanities and social sciences.

A new project for Cuba. Sabre has begun sending less-than-container book shipments, of small quantities per title, to individuals in many parts of Cuba. Titles have been shipped on a wide variety of subjects, from medicine and social sciences to literature and children’s texts. Sabre hopes to continue this assistance to the Cuban people in 2001.

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