A periodic insider guide to the joys and struggles of saving books from being pulped and redistributing them amongst the bookless of this world - starting with the neighbours.
We had a really good write-up in The Journal - thanks Jemma Crew for that.
You can still read it here
or here!
How Tyneside charity is taking unwanted books and giving them new life
By Jemma Crew
The Borderline Books project aims to encourage greater literacy and foster a love of reading and books
Amina Marix Evans at Borderline Books in Gateshead
Imagine a hideaway containing thousands of free books just waiting to be picked up off the shelves and enjoyed.
A place filled to the rafters with words - hundreds of thousands of
words crammed between each creased spine, filling each well thumbed
page, words spilling off the shelves and out of boxes, stacked
precariously in wheelbarrows and other similarly odd and out-of-place
receptacles.
You might not expect such a literary treasure trove to be tucked away
in a corner of a remote Team Valley trading estate. But that’s the
surprising location of Borderline Books, a project which collects used
and unwanted books and redistributes them to vulnerable and deprived
communities in the North East.
One cold, clear winter morning, I met Amina Marix Evans, the woman behind the exciting scheme.
The idea for Borderline Books was born early in the morning of September 11, 2001, when Amina was living in the Netherlands.
She said: “I was a literary agent since 1980 – long before PDFs. So I was receiving parcels of books every day.
“The whole thing came about because I thought: there are all these
organisations sending books to places like Africa, and meanwhile we have
Africans living in the next street on a shoestring who would love to
have some books for their kids.
Claire Marron at Borderline Books in Gateshead
“We set up in Gateshead
in the summer of 2011. At the same time, a publisher I knew contacted
me and said ‘We are clearing out our archives – there are about 200
boxes’. So we had this thing and then it got bigger and bigger. And now
we have this wonderful space.”
A space appreciated by Sam Connor, 42, a support coordinator for
Gateshead Women’s Refuge, which provides a safe place for women and
children fleeing difficult situations such as domestic abuse.
She said: “We’ve been coming for years, and Amina always makes people very welcome. It is an absolutely great idea.
“I am a great one for thinking that knowledge is power. Lots of the
women do not have any aspirations about their future, so just getting
them back into reading a novel can do wonderful things. And it’s
something they may not have done before, bearing in mind many of them
have been in abusive relationships without much say as to what they do.
It is a way of encouraging them to do something for themselves.
“It brings all kinds of benefits. Last year the women were going
through a phase where they were enjoying cooking so they went to get
some cookery books. Books are quite expensive to buy – especially
reference books. Because of this they were able to continue cooking.”
As the name might suggest, Borderline Books thrives on being a truly
inclusive service, crossing boundaries of race, colour, age, wealth and
health throughout the North East.
The project, which is run by the Kittiwake trust and has a sister
project in the Netherlands, donated a record total of 7,106 books in
2014. It shows no sign of slowing down, with funding from places
including MG NorthEast, the Hospital of God at Greatham, the Jill
Franklin Trust and Gateshead Council.
Visitors donated a further £600 to the cause, and all the initial
furnishings were either recycled, freecycled or donated – they only
set-up purchases being rubbish bins and a washing-up bowl. From this
humble beginning the idea has blossomed, and as it stands in early 2015,
Amina and her team of volunteers have supplied books to more than 70
organisations, ranging from autism support groups to prisons to schools.
Amina Marix Evans at Borderline Books in Gateshead
These come from many sources: direct from publishers, from
individuals keen to empty their shelves – and companies such as Nexus
who have promised to give books left behind on public transport that
have not been claimed.
Amina said: “In spite of the large number of books we gave away in
2014, we nearly always receive more than we give away. We really need to
drive home the fact that local organisations supporting marginalised
and vulnerable people can come to us and get books totally free of
charge.
“There was a woman in Middlesborough who set up a big literacy
library last year. There were families with no books at home and she
said: ‘Why don’t you join the library?’ and they said ‘But if the baby
or the dog mess up the books we are going to have to pay and we cannot
afford it’. So they were scared of joining – which is awful.”
“I encourage organisations to come once by themselves and see that I
am not kidding, and then come again with a group of people.”
David Palmer, 39, is the office manager for SHAID, a Single Homeless
Action Initiative in Durham which provides a peer-support group for men
in and around Stanley. He has brought groups to visit the BookSpace
several times.
He said: “A lot of our group members have been doing art work. The
service has been a great resource on how to paint and draw. We now have a
whole wall of canvases made by the men, and some of that has been
directly inspired by the books.
“A lot of the people we see are very isolated and don’t have much
money. We don’t have many book stores in the Stanley area and many
people don’t have the confidence to travel to Newcastle alone. So we go
as a group – last year we went four times.”
Danny, 35, first attended a SHAID meeting in 2012. He now volunteers
for the organisation, and is on job seekers allowance while he looks for
employment. Just one of the men who has directly benefited from the
service, Danny has been making use of the selection of art books to
improve his painting skills.
He said: “SHAID has really helped me, and now I am volunteering in
the office. I might end up doing an admin course, so if I can get books
on that it would really help us.”
Borderline Books in Gateshead
He added: ‘I’m also interested in fiction and autobiographies, but it
can be very difficult to find certain books, I’m hoping to visit later
this year and I think I will be spoilt for choice when I do.”
While the overwhelming majority of the organisations benefiting from
the project are North East-based, there are exceptions. Limerick Prison,
in Ireland, for example, was sent a shipment of books after Amina heard
that its library had very few books for women.
The organisation also delivered a collection of large-print books to
the Joseph Rowntree retirement village in Scarborough, as well as 700
books to Bradford, where a new BookSpace will be opening in March. It’s
hoped that this branching out will lead to more BookSpaces being set up –
Amina has dreams for cities like Leeds and Manchester to host their
own.
And outside of the UK the project has also made its mark. As part of
Gaza Toy Drive, over 200 books are in the process of being sent to
children and students in Gaza, and in 2013 300 books were donated to
children in a German village.
When it comes to the future, it’s clear that Amina is brimming over
with ideas, much like her shelves filled to bursting with books.
There are plans to continue holding Wordplay sessions, creative
explorations of language and games to encourage young people who do not
enjoy reading to leap that barrier and discover the joy of words. (“In
my opinion there should be a lot of laughter attached to word-play”).
A multi-lingual library of 40+ languages is due to open in the next
few weeks in Newcastle city centre, where the hope is that volunteers
from different communities will take care of the shelves of books in
their own language.
She also wants to visit some women’s refuges in the area, to “make
them feel better about themselves” through something akin to
‘pampering’, though Amina is loathe to use the word, with all its
connotations of idle luxury. (“These are the people who need it most,
and they aren’t going to pay a penny for it”, she says, almost
defiantly.”)
But realistically, Amina is just one person, and her dreams can’t simply be imagined into reality.
There’s much practical groundwork to cover: paperwork and funding
applications, the sorting and stamping of books, and searching for new
premises and volunteers.
“While we welcome book donations, they tend to come automatically,
while letting organisations know we exist and there really isn’t a
‘catch’ to it, requires a lot of outreach.”
Motivated by the belief that books can transform lives - “free books,
free minds” - Amina is determined to ensure that nobody, whatever their
background, feels that reading is off-limit: “We are interested in
working with Probation Services to have new BookSpaces run by people
leaving prison - as Borderline Books offers experience that could
prepare people for working in a shop, library, warehouse or office -
perhaps combining it with literacy classes, writing groups or other
projects.”
For more information please visit www.borderlinebooks.org.
Here we are in 2015 and I didn't even get here in time to say Happy New Year.....
2014 was a record year for us - we gave away a total of 7,106 books, which is wonderful as it shows that we are needed and more people are starting to see the value in giving away free books.
One of the big pieces of news at the end of the year was that we delivered 700 books to Incommunities - Open Field, who will open a Bradford branch of Borderline Books in March. We are hoping that this could be the start of the spread of Borderline Books to Leeds, Manchester, York, Carlisle.... wherever there are people who are homeless, women's refuges, hostels for young people, people returning to the community from prison....... which is basically any town large enough for Boots or McDonalds........ The idea is very simple and it can be carried out in many different ways to support whoever is running and using the project. Please contact us if you need more information. books [at] borderlinebooks.org
This year we are taking on a number of new volunteers to help with outreach, office management and generally keeping things going so that some of us are able to go out and meet people and see how the books are being used in various places.
We had a visit in January by a group from Carr Hill Primary School who had taken our Gingerbread House to school before Christmas. They collected a HUGE amount of books for us - books they had grown out of and books the staff and parents had donated - totally wonderful. They had a good time choosing some new books for themselves and a friend or parent. Carr Hill are planning to bring more children down to use in the next few weeks.
New Contacts this year include Riverside Community Health Project, who are proposing to provide plenty of free books to their service users (could we not just call them humans, visitors, friends?), Making Winter Warmer, who took lots of warm clothes, toiletries and other items people had donated to us to be passed on, and Gateshead Evolve, who have fantastic plans for supporting people in recovery. We are very much looking forward to working closely with them in the near future.
It's really important for us to keep making new contacts with organisations supporting vulnerable and marginalised groups in need of books. If we don't keep up with the tsunami of books donated to us, then the whole thing is pointless.
As for Kindles etc.... the number of people who tell us they bought an e-reader two or three years ago, or were given one as a present, but they
just don't use them any more is amazing :-) [snigger!]
Another of our stupendously delightful open day fundraisers coming up - just making sure that you save the date and don't go off having birthdays, getting married or other nonsense. You know this is the place to be..........
We've been receiving loads of books, which are expertly stamped and cleaned up by young people doing reparations and we've given away loads too.... We're almost at 5000 so far this year, which means we will certainly beat last year's record.
We have been doing outreach to care homes, retirement villages, hospices and neuro centres and will be building on that as time goes on.
We've also received funding from the Hospital of God at Greatham and the Jill Franklin Trust and a donation from MG Northumbria to pay for some more bookshelves....... we keep growing out of the shelving. Thanks so much to all these for their support - and for the donations that appear in the collection box from people coming to collect books from us. Every penny is appreciated.
In the next few months we hope finally to be able to start our long-awaited Multi-Lingual Library and are also talking to various organisations about starting new Borderline Books chapters in other towns around the North-East. We are particularly interested in working with groups supporting people leaving prison as it makes such a great project to get people back into life on the outside and can also offer training in all kinds of work skills.
Our literacy project for young people, WordPlay is still waiting to start - everything is in place apart from the candidates.... we know there are plenty of young people in the area whose literacy skills are far lower than they should be, and we are really excited to get some youngsters into the pilot project to find out what fun can be had from words and reading.
Two of the tutors will be demonstrating a session at the open day in November, so if you are thinking of bringing people to us to be cajoled into reading, come along and see what fun it will be.
June has been Volunteer's Month in Gateshead. Our volunteer, John Harlock, braved the weather and took a table full of books to Trinity Square on 7 June for the opening event. Pam Gibson went to the Teams Festival on 14 June -this is our third Teams Festival. On Sunday 29th we had a table at the Bensham and Saltwell festival for the first time. - So far we gave away 288 books at these 3 events.
On 5 July we will be at Dunston and on 19 July at Birtley and also at a Salvation Army event in Gateshead..... so let's see if we can keep up the momentum!
On June 20 - World Refugee Day we held an event at our Team Valley location. In the morning there was a presentation by Hannah from GVOC about the latest regulations regarding refugees, asylum applicans and volunteering. In short, they can all volunteer as restrictions have been lifted. This is excellent news as volunteering offers such a good opportunity for people to join in, meet new people, learn the language better and generally spend what may be a worrying and frustrating time doing enjoyable tasks. Thanks to GVOC for a very interesting presentation with lots of space for questions and explanations.
Lunch was provided by Culture Kitchen - and delicious it was too, with dishes from Angola, Poland and other countries which all blended together to make a wonderful meal.
We are looking forward to working with Culture Connect on other projects in the future.... again, wait and see!
In the afternoon Freedom from Torture gave a talk and showed short films about the fate of some people who suffer torture in different countries around the world. Look at their website for more information.
The mini-bus was provided by Community Transport in Byker - big thanks to Dave who patiently drive back and forth hoping for more passengers. Nexus kindly gave us permission to run the shuttle service from inside the Gateshead Interchange. And finally, thanks to Gateshead Council for funding for this event. It was very much appreciated.
In the meantime, summer is around here somewhere, the bees are buzzing and so are our minds, hatching new plots and planning new ventures. We hope to be able to announce progress on the multi-lingual library very soon... we are collecting bi-lingual books, particularly for children, as well as flags from all corners of a spherical planet.
And while we're here - with all these summer festivals our supply of children's picture books is running very low, so if you have any children's books your children have finished with, or know of any schools who are clearing out their libraries, please let them know we would be delighted to give them a home.
There's so much going on at the moment there never seems to be time to update this blog....
The website has been updated - on the English side, anyway, www.borderlinebooks.org
Wordplay is the new literacy project we will be running with young people to find out what's stopping them enjoying reading or writing. The main component of the course will be lots of fun and laughter. there's a Facebook page which will keep you up to date. We have funding for the pilot project and are particularly interested in working with young offenders.
Next, we are looking for groups working with people leaving prison to start up new Borderline Books branches around the country to make books more readily available to people who need them.
We'd like to thank the children and staff at Moorside Primary School who
made a collection for us on World Book Day in March. They came to
school dressed as a character from a book and were asked to bring a
silver coin. We were amazed that they sent us more than £100! Thank you
SO much Moorside!
And the other exciting thing is that we are going to open a Multi-Lingual Library in Newcastle.... When? Where? We'll tell you next time....
Meanwhile we've applied for some funding at last.... We've been managing since 2009 with what people drop in the donations box, together with a fundraising poetry night in 2012 and an open day in 2014... now and then people promise donations and then forget to take care of the crucial business of actually giving it to us. We spend as little as possible, but the volunteers need their travel costs, we have to pay to use the phone and internet and the flyers and other printed materials are not free. The library is going to cost quite a bit to set up, regardless of the cost of the new location. Again we were promised shelving which accidentally got given to someone else :-( so we're buying from ebay... and that's not free either.
Wow, that didn't take long..... Let's start with a quick look back at what we did in 2013...
At the end of April we held our first Open Day. We had our first BBC tv spot. Our first BBC Newcastle interview.
We took part in Gateshead Volunteers month, attending festivals in Saltwell Park, Birtley and Teams. We had at least 4 mass-volunteering days where we accomplished large amounts of work and pretty much cleared up the backlog.
In June we took part in a pilot project at Broadacre House with Northern Creative Solutions.
In December we put book-collection boxes at Seven Stories and Gateshead Civic Centre.
The Score:
Seven Stories: 19 Civic Centre 180
We also once again received items of clothing from Giving World Online
These were distributed to various women's refuges, The Comfrey Project, Panah, Crisis and other local groups. - We do encourage you to sign up with Giving World, they always have interesting things on offer and if we group the orders together we can save a lot on transport costs.
We also received some wonderful donations of books from North Shields and Wallsend libraries - many many thanks to them. It is wonderful to have this support from people who value books the way we do. Many of the library workers were also delighted that their books would go on to have another lease of life, rather than sending them to the knacker's yard and getting pulped.
During 2013 we gave away approx 5183 books, plus DVDs, clothes, oracles, card decks and other goodies.
Looking forward, during 2014 we hope to open a multi-lingual library in Newcastle City centre, start up at least 3 more Borderline BookSpaces in Durham, Carlisle and .... fill in your local town.
We are already working on more active outreach to stop people complaining that they've never heard of us...
We plan to take part in Gateshead Volunteers Month in June again, remembering that the third week of June is also Refugee Week, so we may be able to hold some special events that week in Team Valley.
Also we would like to offer some extras to women's refuges - perhaps 'pamper days' where we can visit the refuges with people who do hair, nails, reiki.... whatever people have to offer and the women will enjoy. Of course we would also take quantities of books to let the women choose for themselves what they'd like to read.
So it's wide open - bring your own ideas, let us know what you can offer. All our contact details are on our website.
Friday, 9 August 2013
It's hard to believe this blog hasn't been updated since March - so much has been happening.
First there was the Open Day in April which brought lots of new faces in to visit our Team Valley BookSpace. It also brought in Hannah Bayman and her team from the BBC who arrived just as we were about to begin the programme.... they hadn't warned us they were coming so they got a somewhat mixed reception. Eventually a short report was shown at Breakfast time, while we were all watching for it in the evening. But the Open Day itself was great, with poetry from Pippa Little, Catherine Graham, short stories from Shelley Day Sclater, an auction, a raffle and a fantastic slap-up meal - more about that on the website.
More recently we arranged for Julian Miles from BBC Newcastle to drop in and make an interview. that was a lot of fun and, well, I'm not sure if it's aired yet or not.....
We had a visit from the Gateshead Young Women's Outreach who excelled themselves going through boxes of books in a huge variety of languages - sorting them by language and stamping them - big thanks for that!
The Birtley Hug brought a few visitors over from their coffee morning and we may perhaps have a volunteer or two as a result of that visit.
In June we took part in Gateshead's Volunteers Month, taking stalls at events in Saltwell Park, the Teams Festival and Birtley Festival. Gateshead Council kindly gave us a small grant for promotional materials, so for once we have a good stock of folders.
Also in June we were at Broadacre House in Newcastle each Wednesday to talk with other charities and individuals about what we do, and to introduce our proposal for a literacy project we are calling WordPlay. This is specifically aimed at teenagers whose reading and writing skills are not up to scratch. The key word is PLAY.... to get people over their resistance to reading and writing as being some boring thing you have to do at school and communicate the huge fun of words. We have been particularly struck by the high proportion of people in prison who have very low literacy skills. In our work with the Young Offenders Team we also come across a number of young people who really need help with literacy to avoid a future where they end up becoming another part of the prison statistic.
According to a report published in December 2012, the North East and London have the lowest literacy levels of the whole country, so this seems like a good time to try to do something about this. We are delighted to be able to say that we have just received a letter from the Woodward Charitable Trust saying that they have agreed to make a small grant so that we can run a pilot for WordPlay this autumn.
Again in the autumn we are hoping to find a permanent (as much as such projects are ever permanent) space at Broadacre House for a multilingual library. We have already had a considerable number of people offering to volunteer for the library. Since several of these are people for whom English is a second or third language, we hope to be able to run sessions where these people can practice their English in a pratical work situation.
In our last entry we showed a photo of the library we helped WERS to set up - unfortunately this is closing down this month, but the books are being returned to us and will form the basis of the new multilingual library. We hope that people who enjoyed visiting the library when it was in Arthur's Hill will find their way to the City Centre and continue being able to enjoy books in their own language.
Saturday 10 August we'll be taking part in the Salvation Army's Community Day, and we'll go loaded down with books. This Salvation Army group has brought us so many useful things - display panels, room separation screens, white boards, an overhead projector which we will use in WordPlay, and many other great things - so losing a day in the midst of what was trying to be a summer holiday is not really a disaster!
For the rest.... there are possibilities of new BookSpaces in a number of places - as always we call on people interested in the project to consider opening a branch near where they live.... It's really not complicated....write and ask if you want to know more.
Also, if you're not already on our Facebook page.... look for the Borderline Books group.
