Thursday 8 January 2009

Year end and New Year

This period is always busy for us. The weekend before Christmas we brought books to the St Vincent de Paul Christmas dinner for the third year in succession. This time we brought some used clothes along as well as books. In addition we took books to Crisis Skylight, Womens Aid Newcastle and WA Gateshead, North East Direct Access, the Barnardo's organisation for teenagers in Whitley Bay, The Base and in the new year also to Shelter, Newcastle. In all we gave away between 600 and 700 books during this period.

We are particularly pleased to have made a number of contacts within Shelter and hope to build on this in order to provide books for Shelter clients across the country.

The general plan for 2009 is to build on our contacts in the UK, while easing the Dutch side of the project into other hands. The contrast between the ways in which Borderline Books is received in the two countries is huge. While in the Netherlands it has taken 7 years to build up a handful of regular recipients, in the UK the project is welcomed with open arms. Very often this has led to the organisations building on that first book donation to create their own libraries.

The Borderline Books dream is that the project should be dynamic and inspiring and open doors to new ideas and creative projects.
We continue to pursue that dream.