Green-Works is an award winning social enterprise and registered charity dedicated to helping the environment by diverting redundant office and school furniture from landfill by providing reused and remanufactured furniture to small business, charities, schools and community groups whilst providing training and real work experience to the unemployed.

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Colin Crooks visits Sierra Leone

28 February 2011

"Earlier this month (February) I visited our main project in Waterloo, Sierra Leone.  I could n't believe the progress that has been made since I last went 2 years ago.  The people there are desperately trying to put the terrible civil war behind them and work for a better future.   The new library that we are going to help equip is virtually complete and a magnificent building it is too.  The library though is not just a construction project it has inspired a whole new culture of reading that has been lost during the war.  Sierra Leone has one of the lowest literacy levels in the world and I firmly believe that helping more people to learn to read will be the key to that countries future as it turns away from the horrors of its recent war.  Working with Codep a fantastic development charity we have helped ship more than  200,000 books to this country which only 3 short years ago had only 23,000 books across the whole country.   Our role has been mainly to supply the vital storage furniture to keep the books dry (critical in a land of intense rainfall and often only palm frond roofs) and the chairs and basic furniture for the children (and teachers ) to sit at.  Without these mundane but critical pieces of furniture the books programme could not have started. 

Building on this amazing progress this month saw the first ever literacy festival in Sierra Leone with literally hundreds of teachers from several parts of the country coming together to learn and share tips with teachers from England on how to develop reading not just vocationally but as entertainment and fun.  

Our work is far form done through - we have many more towns to take books and furniture to and of course we still have the library to finish off.  As you'll see from the pictures it is close to completion and we need to raise £6k to ship out a container full of the chairs desks, shelving and so many other things that will be needed to equip the new library.

Please help in this drive to complete the library at Waterloo.  Please check out and support me on my latest sponsored ride from Edinburgh to Yorkshire over 5 days in April.  Its 350 miles on the route we'll take and a lot of it is quite uphill I'm told!   Just click on the Just Giving link and make your contribution to what is a really exciting and I think life changing project.

If Just Giving is a bit labour intensive then we have an even easier way for you to help :  just text GREEN to 70800 and you can instantly donate £10 to the effort.

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