Moorpark students earn president’s award for African Library Project




BOOK COLLECTORS—Teens from the Canterbury and Ivy Lane communities of Moorpark helped collect books to donate to students in Lesotho, a country in Africa via the African Library Project. The local students received Volunteer Service Awards from President Joe Biden’s office for their work. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

BOOK COLLECTORS—Teens from the Canterbury and Ivy Lane communities of Moorpark helped collect books to donate to students in Lesotho, a country in Africa via the African Library Project. The local students received Volunteer Service Awards from President Joe Biden’s office for their work. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

Two Moorpark High School juniors became involved with the African Library Project because they wanted to make a global change on a small, community level.

They didn’t know their efforts would ultimately be recognized by President Joe Biden. Thanks to their involvement in the project, the 16-year-old students recently received a top civil honors— the President’s Volunteer Service Award.

The African Library Project is a nonprofit organization that starts libraries and donates books to children in rural Africa. Anyone can participate, and volunteers from the United States work to organize book drives and ship the books to libraries in Africa.

That’s exactly what Rohan Koditala and Arnav Magadala did.

With the help of project coordinator Sunita Boppudi, Rohan and Arnav recruited about 20 middle and high school students to help with the book drive.

Boppudi, whose daughter is friends with Arnav, had helped her daughter host a similar drive in 2021.

“I was looking for something for them to do, a project, and we came across this one,” Boppudi said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do this in our community?’”

The group of students learned how many children on the African continent grow up without books. In rural countries especially, young people have little to no access to reading materials beyond textbooks—if textbooks are provided. The African Library Project serves Anglophone countries where students are tested in English during standardized exams. The problem, though, is that these students don’t have enough books to support their reading development.

In a six-month period, Moorpark residents donated 1,000 books and the group raised about $800 to help pay for shipping costs. Five hundred books went to Auray High School and the other 500 were delivered to Lekota Primary School. Both schools are located in Lesotho, a country that’s surrounded by the Republic of South Africa.

Boppudi’s hopes for the book-donating project to be twofold: to help children across the world and to teach local kids about leadership and teamwork.

Rohan felt good about lending his time to the book drive.

“I saw the interest that other people took in this project, and I took it as an opportunity to help people and understand them better,” Rohan said.

As team leaders, Rohan and Arnav started to collect unwanted books from their school’s library and the Moorpark City Library.

The process of sorting the books took months, the boys said. They split the books into fiction and nonfiction and incorporated textbooks into the mix. They included books about geography, math and social sciences. The books were evaluated for damage and were tossed aside if they were unreadable. Then the group started packaging the books, wrapping them carefully to protect them from impact and water damage.

“It took a super long time. It was a lot of commitment,” Arnav said. “It was something we did inside and outside of school, but we got it done.”

By the end, the team had 14 jam-packed boxes of books. Each box weighed 50 pounds, which took a bit of muscle to haul to the local post office.

“My favorite part was getting experience with leadership qualities and having to take care of my own responsibilities (as a leader),” Rohan said. “And getting to have fun with my friends while doing this project.”

It was through Rohan’s father, Ram Koditala, that the Volunteer Service Award came about.

Koditala is president of the Telugu Association of TriValley, a nonprofit that champions charitable, cultural and educational causes. The organization is certified to verify volunteers’ eligibility for the award and submit applications to the president’s office.

He said the kids involved in the African Library Project are also busy volunteering at hospitals, performing graffiti cleanup and tutoring younger kids during the summer in addition to their schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

“I know these kids work very hard (and) I wanted to help give them some recognition and motivation,” Koditala said. “We want to support them so they can continue with this, to not only help the people around them, but anybody in the world.”

The two boys said they were shocked that their local book drive campaign was recognized by the president’s office. Because an award was never their end game, both say they’ll continue to help others in any way they can and pass the torch to the next generation of community volunteers.

“It was something that I had never done before,” Arnav said. “Just knowing we were able to do something so great, giving these books to children in Africa, I’ve never done anything that important.”