All contributions you make are tax deductible whether you contribute books to help fill our existing collection receptacles or whether you make a monetary or used car donation to help us acquire more collection receptacles or to ship our books to needy areas globally. Why give your charitable donations to already well endowed schools and foundations which merely “study” issues of Third World destitution and illiteracy or merely analyze the recycling problems of our American society or the global imbalance of educational resources when you can give to an active humanitarian charity like Hands Across the Water which is addressing both issues and doing so on a massive scale by sending books to the needy not by the mail bagful but by the container load ? This is a no frills, direct service charity. All donations are applied to the collection and distribution of books at no charge to the needy with NO diversions for salary for any of our workers. Our charity is run by volunteers who donate their services at no charge and we keep our overhead low.
How we operate
HATW delivers an effective solution to two problems, the domestic problem of excess books and the overseas problem of not enough books. We collect books from donating local schools and libraries which are excess to their needs, and send the books over to schools and libraries both in the USA and overseas which desperately need and want them. The books we are collecting for reuse in needy societies are of good quality. Over the past five years of our charity’s operation we have provided more than five million books to needy areas ranging from Haiti, Ghana, Kenya, The Gambia, Tanzania, and other countries in Africa, to the newly independent states of the former USSR (Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and to the Philippines. We have also provided books to poor areas here in the United States.
How and where to give us books
Please take your boxes of surplus books to any of our collection centers as shown in “Locations of Our Book Collection Containers” after following the directions for boxing up your books as shown in “How to Pack Your Books for Donation and Deposit in One of Our Collection Containers”.
What kind of books do we take?
We seek every type and style of book, including but not limited to general reading books, both fiction and nonfiction, on all topics of interest, to supply public community libraries and schools in the countries we serve. We take paperbacks as well as hard cover books on all subjects for all age levels, fiction as well as nonfiction, books for children as well as books for adults, as well as textbooks and encyclopedia sets of all kinds and reference works. We seek to strengthen not only schools but also general community libraries in Third World countries where a broad range of reading material is desired. Please spread the word to the greatest extent possible to all your friends and neighbors as well as to any one you know at your local library, school(s) or churches or clubs which might have surplus books. We take virtually everything by way of books in basically functional condition except merchandise catalogs and telephone/trade directories. We also take books on tape and DVD’s of all kinds. Please note however that we cannot take magazines nor can we take periodicals of any kind – sorry, no National Geographic nor any other kind of magazine. We also do not want books with mold or mildew on them. With those limited exceptions, we can take just about everything.