GALLERY: Hearts For Hope

At , paper hearts line the hallways. They symbolize donations from students and parents to an impoverished nation, as part of the Hearts For Hope campaign. (See video.)

But to two local women and a village of African children, they mean so much more.

The hearts represent books and monetary donations aimed at building a library at the Hope School in the African nation of Burundi for the pygmy forest people of the Batwa tribe.

“But they are no longer wanderers,” said activist Jean Sack, a Johns Hopkins University research librarian. “They have kind of been resettled—no water, no electricity, but a school that started as a Sunday school.”

Sack, a Fallston resident, founded the initiative Books For Burundi in 2011 and has since collected more than 20,000 books just from the greater Baltimore region.

A chunk of the donations have come from school-aged children, from events like Family Reading Night, hosted by Hampton Elementary School.

“We feel very fortunate that here at Hampton we have so much,” said Kimberly Labrique, a Hampton parent and close friend to Sack. “We have a wonderful library, we have an educated faculty and we have very generous families. We want to share what we have with those less fortunate than us.”

In the two years that Hampton students have aided Books for Burundi, hundreds of dollars and a couple thousand books have been sent to Africa.

A pen pal exchange program helped the students better understand the cause they were aiding. (See photos.) Close to 200 letters were returned to students this past week, thanking them for the donation.

The books donated last year were the first non-textbooks Burundi children had ever seen.

Children’s literature is such a commodity in Burundi, so much so that thievery is rampant.

“Books in these countries will stay in the libraries for 30 years,” Labrique explained. “There is no such thing as discard. Once they get there, they are well treasured.”

Burundi’s story is unfortunately “a typical story” of war-torn African nations, Sack explained.

Burundi's 14-year civil war displaced countless villagers. The parents of Burundi children were used as porters for rebel armies. But as tensions calm in The Rift Valley, activists like Sack and Labrique hope to rebuild and educate.

“This is an amazing reaffirmation of the power of kids and the power of reading,” Sack said. 

“Health and education go hand in hand,” she continued, quoting her husband.

Establishing a library in Africa is a tricky task, unlike in Bangladesh where, Sack quipped, that she had already fully-stocked four libraries.

Sack made it her mission to ensure that the hull belonging to a container ship leaving Baltimore in February 2011 was full.

In the month that followed, “[the books] successfully went through Darsalam, Tanzania, over the borders and through customs without corruption. It was a minor miracle—no bribes asked. That is so unusual,” Sack explained.

Today, as the country continues to rebuild, Burundi students send letters to Sack, Labrique and the Hampton Elementary students—three generations of givers who have given their hearts for the Hope School.