New Media Awards 2009

Pelican Post

http://www.pelican-post.org

Nominated in Access, Inform, Educate category.

Nick Johnson set up Pelican Post in 2006 after being inspired by a Raleigh International expedition to Uganda. He holds a full time job as a Risk Consultant and has succeeded in creating this project through convincing friends and partners with his enthusiasm for the project to participate. The website is self funded and Nick is currently applying for charitable status.

1 nomination from readers

  • Pelican Post is dedicated to providing children in Africa with appropriate books and increase their chances of becoming fully literate, something in the developed world is considered a basic human right. The site has already had over 13000 hits in 3 months and individuals have pledged to post more than 100 books to the 20 nominated schools in Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana. All the authors featured on the site are donating their time to promote the project and we have gained enormous support from all the partner organisations along with celebrities like John Humphrys and Alexander McCall Smith. We are partnered with companies like Amazon and supported by established charities including Book Aid and various local trusts in Africa. This is a new model for a charity to donate books direct to schools and many organisations are interested in the effectiveness of this method of donation. Its an amazing achievement within just two years and the team of people working with Nick Johnson are incredibly proud of being involved in the project. We would love to become a charity that is self-funded to allow us to develop the site further, improving integration with other sites like Amazon and increasing the amount of material available to browse online such as podcasts by the authors and feedback from children at the schools, which would rally further support from schools in the UK and overseas. We already have a school in Australia working to raise money through selling chocolate to pledge books to our schools and look forward to involving children in the developed world to support the literacy mission in Africa. It would be fantastic to be able to offer the same accepted right to read to African children that children in the UK take for granted. Pelican Post has the potential to do just that and we hope this award will help us on our way to this goal.

    Nominated by Ruth Wells, 21 October 2009

1 comment from readers

  • This is a fantastic concept and deserves to succeed. A fantastically simple way to make a difference.

    Submitted by Robert Thain, 21 October 2009

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