Sabre and Peace Corps collaborate on Book Projects in Armenia

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Sabre and Peace Corps collaborate on Book Projects in Armenia



Sabre and Peace Corps collaborate on Book Projects in Armenia

Sabre and Peace Corps collaborate on Book Projects in Armenia

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Press Release

May 5, 1999 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Tania Vitvitsky (617) 868-3510

SABRE AND PEACE CORPS COLLABORATE ON BOOK PROJECTS WORLD-WIDE

Shipments to Armenia and Ukraine launch new phase of cooperation

Cambridge, MA-- The Sabre Foundation has entered a new phase of its collaboration with the Peace Corps with the shipment of almost 20,000 books to Armenia and Ukraine for use in Peace Corps-supported projects. These two shipments are the first in a series of collaborative efforts provided for in an agreement signed by the two organizations last November. Under the terms of the new agreement, Sabre will facilitate the donation and delivery of thousands of books and other educational materials for use in Peace Corps-supported community service projects around the world.

Sabre and the Peace Corps have formalized and strengthened their cooperative relationship in response to President Clinton's proposal calling for an increase in the number of Peace Corps Volunteers from the current nearly 6,700 (in 78 countries) to 10,000 by the year 2003. As the number of Volunteers increases, requests for books will increase substantially as well.

The commonalities between the Peace Corps' mission to foster human potential and self-sufficiency in developing countries and Sabreís mission to provide donated educational materials to grass-roots organizations in the same regions make for a very effective partnership; in 1998, more than half of the requests made by Peace Corps Volunteers for material support through the Peace Corps' Major Gifts Program were for precisely the kinds of educational materials that Sabre provides.

"The Peace Corps is delighted with the success of its collaboration with the Sabre Foundation," said Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan, a native of Gardiner, Massachusetts. "The books donated by the Sabre Foundation have been of great benefit to our Volunteers involved in educational projects around the world. The public-private partnership between Sabre and the Peace Corps' Major Gifts Program is testimony to the immense good that can come from such cooperation."

Sabre's President, Kenneth G. Bartels, added: "We at Sabre are so pleased to be working with the Peace Corps on this important project. We look forward to further joint efforts elsewhere in the world."

Sabre and the Peace Corps have collaborated on several special book donation projects in the past. On two occasions, cooperative projects were begun at the initiative of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. During her 1996 visit to Romania, Mrs. Clinton remarked on the absence of children's books in the orphanages there. In response, Sabre and the Peace Corps cooperated to bring more than 14,000 children's books to the orphans of Romania. In 1997, as a result of a similar visit by the First Lady to Mongolia, Sabre arranged for the donation and delivery of thousands of health texts, dictionaries, and encyclopedias in support of Peace Corps projects there.

In addition, since 1991 Sabre has provided thousands of elementary readers to Peace Corps Volunteers teaching children in Bulgaria, Congo, Hungary, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, and Thailand; provided thousands of business texts to Volunteers teaching adults in the same countries; donated some two thousand environmental texts for distribution in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia; and donated some 640 sets of The World Book Encyclopedia for distribution in 20 nations worldwide.

This first shipment arranged by Sabre under the new agreement left for Armenia on a United Armenia Fund flight on March 31st, 1999, containing about 2,000 children's books, dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias with a total value of almost $28,000. On April 9, a shipment left for Ukraine containing almost 18,000 books in the social sciences, the humanities, business, engineering, and the fine arts with a total value of approximately $550,000; these books will be used to create a new public library in the city of Dnipropetrovsk. Sabre and the Peace Corps expect to ship five more containers of books by the end of September in support of Peace Corps projects in Ghana, Guyana, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan.

Sabre Foundation, Inc., founded in 1969, works to build free institutions and to examine the ideals that sustain them. Its largest current project makes millions of dollars' worth of donated new books available to needy individuals in developing and transitional societies worldwide through non-governmental partner organizations, libraries, universities, schools, research organizations and other similar institutions. In its newest initiative, Library and Information Technology Services, Sabre helps organizations in these regions take advantage of rapidly evolving Internet and related information technologies. Sabre also sponsors domestic and international symposia, and philosophical publications which explore the nature and accountability of free institutions. Sabre is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and is registered as a Private Voluntary Organization with the U.S. Agency for International Development.





Story Source: Sabre Foundation

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Armenia; Book Projects; NGO's

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