South Africa Schoolbook Donation Drive – Pictured at Gateway to Education Limerick are Paul Goodwin, Assistant Manager and Suzanne Roche, Founder. Picture: Richard Lynch/ilovelimerick

Gateway to Education Limerick fundraise for South Africa Schoolbook Donation Drive

Suzanne Roche, Founder Gateway to Education Limerick pictured during the successful Malawi schoolbook campaign. Picture: ilovelimerick

Gateway to Education Limerick (GTEL) is an education support charity based on Wickham Street in Limerick. The main aim of GTEL is to make education more affordable for Limerick-based families. They focus on reducing the cost of going to school here in Ireland. Part of this includes getting books into the hands of students at a reduced cost to their customer base. The charity is currently appealing for donations to send school books to South Africa and have set up a GoFundMe page to help raise funds for the cause. The proceeds will pay the cost of a large container that will send unwanted school books to schools to the Netherlands. GTEL has teamed up with Read To Grow in the Netherlands who will help them ship much needed school books to South African communities. They just need to get the books to the Netherlands first.

Paul Goodwin, Assistant Manager of Gateway to Education Limerick speaks about their fundraising for a Book Drive to send books to South Africa. They also have set up a GoFundMe page.#limerick #ilovelimerick #lovelimerick #limerickedgeembrace #limerickandproud #limerickcity pic.twitter.com/3MafauejXR

— #LimerickandProud (@ilovelimerick) June 10, 2021

 Paul Goodwin, Assistant Manager of GTEL said, We focus on reducing the costs of going to school here in Ireland. Part of this includes getting books into the hands of students at a cheaper cost. A frequently changing syllabus and new book editions being published each year often means that many schoolbooks become obsolete. Rather than sending these books to landfill we want to reuse them by getting them to communities who need them. In 2018 we sent 500 boxes of books to Malawi in East Africa to a community where over 1000 students shared roughly 100 books between them. The project was a success and we now want to repeat the project.”

Suzanne Roche, Founder of GTEL said, The organisation relies on the help of our volunteers and your generosity. We would be so grateful if you could donate and help cover the cost of shipping these books to the Netherlands. Read To Grow will then take them the rest of the way. Our goal is €2500 euro and anything you can give will be greatly appreciated. If you can’t donate money then please consider donating your old school books to us. To donate money please visit our GoFundMe page that we have set up specifically for our Book Drive fundraising, thank you.”

For more information on Gateway to Education Limerick go HERE

To donate to the GoFundMe page please go HERE