BOOKS FOR THE WORLD - A Historical Summary
 
BFTW - Books for the World (BFTW) concept was born at the International 2000 District Governors-Elect conference in Anaheim, Ca when two DGEs , Ted Pope form D9300, Johannesburg, South Africa and Charlie Clemmons from D5890, Houston, Tx. USA, hatched an idea to ship gently used books from Texas to Johannesburg for a "second wind".  Charlie asked Ted how many books he wanted, and Ted responded with "bury me", and the rest is history. See the Files and Links to the left of this page to review a more complete history of BFTW (in both Power-Point & PDF formats)
 
CNY/WNY BFTW - was conceived in 2008 by PDG Ward Vuillemot during a visit to is RI Governor class-mate, Ted Pope, while on a Rotary Foundation Grant, Adult Literacy project, trip in South Africa.  When Ward visited the Johannesburg BFTW distribution centre, saw it in operation and reviewed the differences it was making in SA and it "knocked his socks off".  Ward returned home to Central New York with an idea to create a Rotarian organization to glean, sort and ship gently used books to Charlie Clemmons' BFTW organization for distribution through the expanding BFTW (Second Wind foundation and he had created in 2000 to supply So. Africa and beyond. The team of Rotarians he organized in CNY districts eventually expanded into two separate organizations; WNY BFTW (Rotary District 7120) and CNY BFTW [501 C-3](Districts 7150, 7170, 7190 & 7040).  They are still going strong  with over 70 Rotary clubs participating in CNY & WNY BFTW. Their efforts also resulted in two Rotary Foundation major grants to fund the shipment of containers of books from Texas to ports around the world.   See the Links to the left and of this page to view the various CNY BFTW Rotary club's participant of contribution approximately 40 sea-containers of books as of March 2021.  
 
Other USA Based Rotarian BFTW organizations - Among other Rotarian based book gleaning operations in the USA that are shipping books to BFTW for distribution to 3rd world countries Click here for fulll listing as well is the Madison Ws, Rotarians group.