Bernardsville News >News


Schooling Tanzanian girls becomes family's mission       

By W. JACOB PERRY, Staff Writer


Published: Feb 5th, 6:23 AM

BERNARDS TWP. - The McNamara family always loved to travel across the globe, but a few years ago decided they weren't going far enough.

"We just realized we were interfacing with tourist operations, and not really meeting the people," said Karen McNamara, a mother of three who lives on Spring House Lane. "Plus, we love to give back."

It was 2005 and from then on, the McNamaras made sure they traveled to remote areas to do volunteer work in schools, orphanages and old age homes - first in Peru, then Costa Rica, Guatemala and China.

Last August, the family traveled to Tanzania in eastern Africa. Working in the rural village of Kagondo, they helped to furnish a classroom for girls.

"We thought it was a one-time thing," McNamara recalled. "But as we were leaving, the head mistress locked eyes with us and said, 'Don't forget us.' That really stuck with us."

The family has been working to help Kagondo ever since.

Shannon McNamara, 15, who was looking to fulfill her Girl Scout Gold Award project, created Shannon's After School Reading Exchange (SHARE) to collect books - from children's books to picture books - for the girls' schools.

She spread the word with fliers, while the family hosted fund-raisers. At one event last November, a Tanzanian professor entertained about 100 people with a slideshow and drum session.

The efforts paid off. SHARE raised $11,000 to open more village classrooms, and collected 8,000 books from, among others, neighbors, the Boys Scouts, the Girl Scouts, Cedar Hill School and William Annin Middle School.

The books were stored in 97 boxes in the McNamaras' garage. A friend of the family, Rich Graber of Debra Lane, who is president of Sterling Transport Services in Middlesex, arranged to have the books picked up.

On Monday afternoon, Feb. 2, Shannon McNamara and seven Ridge High classmates loaded the boxes into two minivans. The boxes were brought to a warehouse in Newark, where they were to be labeled and sent to Minnesota where a group called Books for Africa will arrange the shipment to Tanzania.

"It's really good to know you're making a difference," said Shannon, a Ridge High sophomore. "You can make sure girls learn and improve their lives."

Added her mother, "We have so much here, and people in New Jersey are so generous. People are reaching out and helping out in so many ways."

Shannon's father, Sean McNamara, said taking the first charitable step is often difficult due to the uncertainties, "but once you take it, you get so much back from it."

'Book Famine'

Karen McNamara said Kagondo is in one of the poorest sections of Tanzania, itself an impoverished nation. She said the schools typically have windows without glass, roofs full of holes and a shortage of supplies.

As many as five students sit at a desk, she said, and pencils are so scarce that students break them into three pieces to be shared.

Books are just as hard to come by, McNamara said. She noted that even after book shipments arrive in Tanzania, they must be transported by train to Lake Victoria, then ferried across the lake and trucked to Kagondo.

"That's why you don't have many books there," she said. "You have a book famine in Africa."

As bad as the situation is, it's worse for girls, McNamara said. She explained that Tanzania has a chauvinistic culture in which girls are expected to wash clothes and chop crops while the boys study.

That's why the McNamaras focused on classrooms for girls. They plan to return to Tanzania this summer and use the $11,000 they raised to equip the village classrooms with electricity, glass windows, carpeting, tables, chairs and even laptop computers.

Security will also be provided in the form of door locks and bars for windows. McNamara said books are so valuable there that they must be protected.

Even after the family sends the books and opens the classrooms, it plans to continue its book collecting and fund-raising efforts.

"The girls in Africa are going to become slowly empowered to literacy, and they want to learn so badly," McNamara said. She recalled one class session in which the girls were offered a break but declined.

"Some of these girls had never touched books," she said. "They said, 'No, we want to read.' "

For more information on the program, visit www.shareinafrica.org.


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