The Illawarra resident wanted to source 10,000 unwanted books to donate to impoverished children from his home town of Mavhurazi in north eastern Zimbabwe.

More than 30,000 books were collected and in April this year 5,000 were handed over to the first of six primary schools.

Dr Chidembo said the whole community was singing and dancing in celebration.

“We would like to thank everyone who has donated books, time and money, given words of wisdom and those who believed in us right from the beginning,” he said in a newsletter.

“The children at Mavhurazi Primary and five other schools will now have a better learning experience.”

The work of Books For Zim is still ongoing with the schools currently creating functional libraries to house the donated books.

Dr Chidembo said the next task was to revisit the community with bookshelves, to train their teachers to be librarians and create learning programs to support the library.

For more information visit https://aussiebooksforzim.org