His 3-day Taylors Falls-to-Capitol walk is for book money

By Mary Divine
Friday, April 25, 2014

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Tom Warth, the founder of Books for Africa in St. Paul, is lacing up his hiking boots and shining his hiking poles again.

Warth, 79, will lead a 50-mile walk from Taylors Falls to the state Capitol in St. Paul this weekend to raise money to send books to African children.

Warth, who lives in Marine on St. Croix, and others will follow back roads to Scandia on Friday, trek through William O'Brien State Park and the Jackson Meadow housing development Saturday, and hike the length of the Gateway Trail to the Capitol on Sunday.

Members of the public are welcome to join the walk; 60 walkers have signed up to share sections of the trek. Each walker will carry a book to mark the first leg of that book's journey to Africa. The books and money raised will be used to send a shipping container filled with 22,000 books to students in Somalia.

Making such a trek is nothing new for Warth. To raise money for Books for Africa, he has walked across Gambia in West Africa; from Lake Michigan to South Dakota; from Canada to Iowa; and from Menomonie, Wis., to St. Paul. He also climbed Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa.

Since Warth founded Books for Africa in 1988, the organization has collected and shipped 30 million books to students in 49 countries. It is the largest shipper of educational books to Africa.

"Even with all the books shipped so far, there are still 450 million children and a total African population approaching 1 billion, so we have much more work to do to end the book famine," Warth said.

For more information, go to booksforafrica.org.

Mary Divine can be reached at 651-228-5443. Follow her at twitter.com/MaryEDivine.

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