Re-inventing the wheel

I'm in New York for the summer, pottering around and doing some work on getting the project together.

During one of my marathon web researching sessions, I came across an organization called Books for Africa (www.

booksforafrica.org). They are basically a large scale version of what I had in mind. They gather donated books, sort them, box them up and send them to projects in Africa. I've been in touch with them and they have offered to ship me a freight container full of donated books as long as I fundraise the money for shipping. The container would contain approximately 22,000 books and the shipping cost is $9,500 (about 50c/book). They also gave me contact information for the Ghana Book Trust which is a governmental organization in Ghana that they ship books to already. They distribute the donated books from Books for Africa to library projects in Ghana. So it may be possible for me to just show up in Ghana, put a proposal to the Ghana Book Trust and simply go and collect the books. That would save me probably 80% of the work involved in putting together the library as there would be no running around collected donated books, no need to fundraise for shipping, no hanging out at docks, no haggling with West African customs officials, etc. etc. Also 22,000 books may be a bit excessive and they could start me off with a smaller batch. Now I am of two minds. On one hand this would make things surprising easy. On the other hand, it will take a lot of the challenge out of the project and I was rather looking forward to the challenge. I have had such a great response from people who want to get involved. A lot of people are unemployed right now and looking for a worthy cause in which to invest some of their energy. I don't know. I'll have to give this some thought. If anyone is reading this, I would love your feedback.