Buy Books, Fight Poverty

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Feb 08

Buy Books, Fight Poverty

Tag: books, personal — Kalena Jordan @ 10:53 pm

You look familiar. Are you on Twitter? Subscribed to my feed yet?

I’m too tired tonight to tackle a Q and A, so I thought I’d mention an interesting project I saw advertised on TV today.

Good Books New Zealand is a new not-for-profit startup that is trying to fight poverty in a very unique way. They call themselves the online bookstore with a conscience, because they plan to donate 100 percent of profits from their book sales to Oxfam. Here’s a blurb from their site:

“Every time you buy a book from Goodbooks – any book – we contribute all profits to Oxfam to help fight its global battle against poverty and social injustice. There is no extra cost to you. We do not mark up our books to cover this contribution; our prices remain among the lowest you will find; delivery worldwide is completely free, and with over two million titles in stock our range is one of the largest you will find.”

Terrific cause and great idea! I don’t know how they are going to fund the business side of things, but I’ll be interested to see where it goes from here. They ship books worldwide for free, so buy a book and fight poverty.

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8 Responses to “Buy Books, Fight Poverty”

spostareduro says:
February 11th, 2008 at 1:12 am

Hi Kalena. I’m glad to see that you are back and flowing again!

This seems like a worthy cause for sure. I’ll try to pass it on where I can..

I wonder how we could get more specific about how the funds are distributed to serving those in poverty?

Thanks for planting this. It’s nice to see. :-)~
Jane says:
February 11th, 2008 at 11:56 am

Hi Kalena,

Thank you so much for visiting the Good Books website. Just to let you know that our model works because we work through an overseas distributor, who supplies our books at a delivered price, packing included. So, our local costs are limited to premises, equipment, basic adminsitrative stuff, legal support, advertising, PR and labour. Whilst this sounds like a lot all these things are zero cost – they are donated, voluntary and/or pro-bono. Which means that every cent we earn goes to support projects in communities in need through Oxfam. Having a zero expenditure policy is quite a challenge some days but it is worth it. When it gets hard I just remind myself who I work for – people in communities that have to walk hours each day just to get basic amounts of water…that puts all our stuff into perspective and makes it easy to work here.

Thanks again for visiting and passing it on!

PS: The link to our ad is at: http://www.goodbooksnz.co.nz/promotion

Best wishes,

Jane (Founder/Director)
Kalena Jordan says:
February 11th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

@ Spostare – thanks Kim! I’ll be Sphinning it later if you want to give it some link love. Jane has posted some more info about how it works in her comment and there is also some detail on the Oxfam web site.

@ Jane – thanks so much for commenting Jane :-) I greatly admire the whole project and have been telling lots of people about it. I’m heading up to Webstock in Wellington this week so I’ll be sure to spread the word there too. Next time anyone in our family wants to buy a book, I’ll be sure to check your range instead of visiting Borders or Amazon.
spostareduro says:
February 12th, 2008 at 5:30 am

I’ve submitted it where I can..I will post a follow-up on my blog linking to this post.

Thanks..
Good Books and Oxfam Fighting Poverty and Injustice one Book at a Time says:
February 12th, 2008 at 9:58 am

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Jane says:
February 12th, 2008 at 11:31 am

Hi again,

The money goes to community projects through Oxfam – but we do not fund Oxfam itself. We select projects on the basis of them being about bringing sustainbale developement to communities in need. We have just completed funding for a project bringing water and sanitation to highlands communities in Papua New Guinea.

Jane
Kalena Jordan says:
February 12th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

@ Kim – thanks, that’s awesome
@ Jane – thanks for the detail, I really like your approach (and Oxfam’s) re sustainable development. Much more helpful than the forcing of bibles and religion into poor villages (like some so-called aid groups). Reminds me of that Southpark episode where Cartman says to the starving African: “Jesus + Bible = food”
andrew says:
June 27th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

St. Andrew’s Church in Kiev – information about.Sculpture of the St. Andrew’s Church in Kiev.