The Harry Potter Alliance

By Erin Millar

August 30, 2012

Bettering the World, One Library at a Time

Remember that time when HPA members donated over 13,000 books to the Agohozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda?  Or how about that time when members donated over 40,000 books to local communities, one of which was the Mississippi Delta?  Or that time when we built a library for the Bedford-Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School in Brooklyn, New York?

There’s no doubt that we’ve done some amazing work to spread the love of stories to people around the world, making sure that children who otherwise may have had difficulty getting their hands on limitless books can get just as immersed as everyone else in the fictional worlds we love.

You may have also heard about this little thing we’re doing right now–Equality FTW.  Sound familiar?  (I certainly hope so, seeing as how we’ve talked about little else for the last couple weeks.)

Epic book drives and libraries and Equality FTW?  What do these three things have to do with each other?  Quite a bit.

The money that you’re helping us raise is going to help us make those book drives into libraries.  And those libraries into communities.  One of our goals is to build a network of Imagine Better libraries around the world, connecting students and making getting their hands on books all the easier.

This is one of the facets of the Equality FTW campaign that I’m personally most excited about.  When I was little, I was a bookworm (and, let’s just face facts, things haven’t changed much in the intervening years).  I spent more time in my school library than I did anywhere else.  I loved library days, when I got to explore for as long as I could desire.  I couldn’t get my hands on enough of the books in my elementary school library–so much so that I also spent a lot of time getting books from the public library as well.

Stories were my best friends when I was in elementary school.  They were my escape from classmates I didn’t really want to subject myself to, they were my way to expand my world beyond the borders of my neighborhood, and they taught me more than nearly anyone else.  I would never have traded the moments I had in my school library for anything.  My life at school would have been vastly different–and vastly less pleasant–had I not had a school library and stories to use as a refuge.

So the funds that you’re doing an epic job helping us raise for Equality FTW are going to go to help give kids everywhere that same refuge, that same opportunity to escape and use their immaginations and learn outside of the normal classroom walls.  The Bed-Stuy New Beginnings Charter School Imagine Better Library will have a family of Imagine Better libraries; the students of those libraries will have a community of stories.

A community of stories.  I can think of nothing better than that.

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