TEXTBOOKS FOR CHANGE
The notion that education is a basic right, not a privilege, is the driving force behind social venture Textbooks for Change. “We believe, as a team, that education really is the backbone to creating a better society,” says founder and CEO Chris Janssen. “All of us champion behind education and making that a human right.” After graduating from Western University in 2013, he embarked on a journey to East Africa, where he saw library shelves practically bare except for old and tattered books. “Students were foregoing meals to make photocopies of these books.” Internet access was spotty, so students couldn’t get access to the same kind of online materials they could in Canada. For Janssen, the first step to guaranteeing education is making sure textbooks are affordable. After returning home, he decided to do what he could to make that a reality. In a Hamilton warehouse, the social enterprise collects post-secondary textbooks from universities and colleges across North America published after 2000. Half are sent to six universities in East Africa, shipped in crates that each hold about 30,000 textbooks. Another 30 per cent are recycled, and the remaining 20 per cent are sold online to North American students at reduced prices, Janssen says. The goal is to send one million textbooks to universities throughout sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. As of mid-November, they had donated 135,000 textbooks to campus libraries, according to their website.