Mobile bookshop goes online
Finders Keepers Children's Online Bookshop is a new initiative from the Help The Rural Child's Mobile Bookshop.
Photo by Streetwindy© from Pexels
The Mobile Bookshop was started in 2008 by Natalie Cheketri who drove from school to school in her car jam packed with books, offering her wares to any and everyone who would listen. She steadily built up a huge following with the learners and parents alike. Schools would book months in advance to ensure that the learners had an opportunity to purchase good quality second-hand books.
Help The Rural Child, is an organisation that runs a chain of charity shops in and around the Cape Peninsula. The funds generated from the sale of goods through these shops and the mobile book shop goes to support the programmes that the Goedgedacht Trust run with rural children and their families in and around Riebeek Kasteel in the Swartland. These programmes start when a pregnant mom is identified within the community and continues with support structures up to the age of 25.
Prior to Covid-19 the mobile bookshop went from school to school offering learners, parents and teachers a chance to purchase children’s books at reasonable prices.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown in South Africa, and the continued closure of schools and needing to social distance, has had a devastating effect on the income generated by the mobile bookshop.
With the need to continue bringing in much needed funding for Help the Rural Child, Natalie, the originator and manager, of the mobile bookstore forced to think out the box, and to diversify, seized the opportunity to start an online children’s bookshop, Finders Keepers Children’s Online Bookshop, so that she could continue to offer children’s books in good condition at great prices.
