Holly Leaf believes in the value of children reading. So much so that she’s trying to collect 1,000 books for her own daughter.

Kaitlin Leaf, 25, will be sharing those books with about 450 children in South Africa to start, and the hope is the collection will become a living project and continue to touch lives for years.

Kaitlin is an Educational Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English to middle and high school students in Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho, South Africa. Most of her students at the Ha-Matsie state school have never been in a library, never used a computer and don’t have regular access to newspapers.

That’s why Kaitlin applied to the African Library Project, a nonprofit that partners with volunteers in African communities, to start a library in a section of the bursar’s office at the school. The school will have shelves built to hold the books and a table and a few chairs that can be arranged so students can sit and read.

Most of the children at the school live in huts with no electricity and no running water, and generally have only one meal a day, Holly said. To keep warm in the winter, Kaitlin sleeps with her down coat and boots on. She walks 45 minutes to the school, picking up students along the way.

Though the people who live there don’t have much, Kaitlin’s host family — whom Holly refers to simply as her daughter’s father, mother, two sisters and brother — could tell she was feeling isolated, Holly said. So they got her a puppy she has named Lucky.

“They don’t have anything either, but they could tell she needed a boost,” Holly said.

The library will help Kaitlin fulfill the Peace Corps requirement to leave behind a living project, something that has a positive impact on the community, Holly said.

Holly got started on collecting 1,000 used or new books as part of the requirements to get the library started. She first set up a table at The Market on Oct. 24 to collect books and share information about the African Library Project. She was met with interest and support from former Peace Corps workers, teachers and librarians, she said. Anybody connected to reading wanted to help.

Books that are needed and wanted include paperback easy readers, baby board books, picture books and juvenile literature as well as kindergarten through eighth-grade textbooks in English, math, geography and science. Post 1990 encyclopedias, atlases, thesauruses and dictionaries would also be of help. Paperbacks would be easier for shipping, but hardbacks will be accepted.

In addition to the books, Holly needs $500 to ship them. She said she’d rather not ask individuals for the money but has starting writing letters to local service clubs with literacy programs for the funds.

The funds and books have to be in hand by Nov. 20, so Holly can have them ready to ship Dec. 1 to a location in the U.S. where they will be loaded onto a container ship bound for Africa.

The library will be used by the 16 teachers and approximately 450 students at the school who generally have a reading level far below their age, Kaitlin wrote in her application letter to the African Library Project.

But with books within their reach, they will accelerate quickly, Holly said. “It is the one thing that gets them into places they want to be — school, starting a business.”

She knows of one girl who decided to pursue college after reading a Baby-sitter’s Club book.

“I think a lot of these kids don’t get a lot of inspiration,” she said.

Lesotho has substantial obstacles its people have to overcome, she said. AIDS is widespread, most fathers make it home only once or twice a year from their work elsewhere in South Africa and the country’s life expectancy is 39. Though the Lesotho government is stable, the country lacks resources in the mountainous region.

“But when kids read they get ideas beyond their suffering,” Holly said.

Students in Lesotho study in their own language at a younger age but by middle school are taught English.

“It is a struggle to teach students the nuances of English when students don’t read a wide range of books,” wrote Mathabang Marunye, an English teacher at the school who along with about 15 students in the school’s English Club will oversee the library.

Kaitlin has spent one year of a two-year tour of duty teaching at the school for the Peace Corps after a short stint working at Mary Ann’s Kitchen in Anacortes. She and her family moved to the Northwest after she graduated with an English degree from Sacramento State University in 2005.

In addition to her time in Africa, she has taught English in China and has worked at an orphanage in Israel.

Holly, her husband Mark and sister will be visiting Kaitlin in December for two weeks as summer approaches there. Separate from the book project, she’d like to take along letters from Anacortes children for those at her daughter’s school. It wouldn’t be a pen pal project since the students there generally can’t afford stamps, but it would provide them with more reading material on a personal level.

“Kids know what to say,” Holly said. “I don’t know what it is but kids know what to say to each other.”

Book collection

Holly Leaf will be at The Market at 1519 Commercial Ave. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday collecting books for the beginnings of a library in Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho, South Africa, and sharing information about the African Library Project.

Children’s books for ages kindergarten through eighth grade can be dropped off at The Market, Starbucks Coffee, 1720 Commercial Ave., and Coyote Coffee, 8152 S. March Point Road, through Nov. 20.

Teachers interested in having their students write letters to the children at Holly’s daughter Kaitlin Leaf’s school can contact her at 588-8590 or .

Follow Kaitlin’s online journal in Africa at http://thelifelesotho.blogspot.com/