Charity provides books to poor children

May 6, 2010, 13:13 GMT

Hamburg - Children need books, poor children even more so. This is the slogan of a charity that has begun distributing books to children by making them available at food pantries for the poor in Germany.

Wilfried Stascheit, founder of the charity, told the German Press Agency dpa that the organization's goal is that all children receive books, not just those who can afford them. He and his wife Annelie launched the charity at the Frankfurt book show last year. Its name is selbst.los, which is a play on the word that means selfless in German.

'The charity has distributed 30,000 books in pilot projects at 30 food pantries in the south-western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg,' Stascheit said. 'In the meantime another 45,000 books have been collected and are waiting to be claimed.'

The initiative aims to expand into other German states. The books are remnants or surpluses that would otherwise be turned to pulp. Some 30 children's book publishers in Germany have reserved books to be sent to the food pantries.

The charity's flag has the phrase 'man does not live by bread alone' imprinted on it. Food pantries that serve poor people were selected so that children from poor families could come into contact with books. The goal is to give disadvantaged children easy access to

education and culture.

'We want to make people who presently can't afford books excited about reading,' said Annelie Stascheit. 'But to achieve that they need experience with their own books from childhood on. Having your own favourite books is something different than just borrowing reading material from a library.'

It's important to her that the literature is free and distributed privately to people.

'We don't want to be competition for book stores or create a second market,' she said.

The Stascheits are now asking the support of other publishers, sponsors and other food pantries. The cost of distributing and transporting the books until now has been covered by the charity.

The idea of distributing books at food pantries came to Wilfried Stascheit when he volunteered to work at one in the south-western German town of Singen.

'I thought the concept used to provide poor people with food could be transferred to books,' he said. 'Just as with the food, unsold or unused books would otherwise be thrown away.'

After that experience Wilfried and his wife began asking fellow publishers for remaining stocks of books.

'I always heard the comment, 'What a good idea. Why hasn't someone already thought of it?''