by Naomi House, MLIS
updated 11/17/14 & originally published 12/13/14
What is T160K? And What Can You Do to Help?
Back in February I presented on a panel at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa. I was incredibly excited to be placed on the community building panel with Dr. Stephanie Diakité, who was deeply involved in the work to preserve the rescued Timbuktu manuscripts including the highly successful Indiegogo campaign, Libraries in Exile. Preservation efforts for the very delicate and fragile parchment and velum included fundraising through an organization Stephanie founded called T160K, for moisture traps, archival boxes, and the additional footlockers required to safely store these manuscripts, as well as to cover the significant labor effort required to unbox and re-pack the manuscripts for preservation.
Stephanie and I got to talking about the amazing communities of librarians, preservationist and archivists that we both knew as well as the many potential projects and partners for other projects across Africa that Stephanie knew about and we decided to form a social purpose corporation dedicated to creating a crowdfunding platform for donations to vetted African culture, heritage and patrimony projects beyond and including the manuscripts.
I am excited to announce that we just launched the crowdfunding site at T160K.org!
Sounds fantastic, right? So what will be on the site? What projects will you see and can donate to and how can you help? Great questions!
What Projects Will be On T160K.org at Launch?
Currently we have several projects / partners signed up at launch including cataloging the Timbuktu rescued manuscripts in Mali, the Circus Debre Berhan in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Fendika Cultural Club in Ethiopia and West African / Mali Instruments 4 Africa.
What Can You Do?
SOCIAL MEDIA: Share with your networks our link and the launch date. Let them know we are new crowdfunding platform for African art, culture, archives, dance, heritage and more! Add us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and even Ello
TWEET: I am looking to get the word out to journalists. “Are you a blogger / journalist or know one who would be interested in interviewing our team about T160K? Email naomi@t160K.org Please share” and follow us @T160K @T160KNaomi and @T160KTony
INTERVIEW US: Do you have a blog? Are you a journalist? We would love to do an interview with you! Email naomi@t160k.org for details!
EMAIL: Email naomi@t160k.org to sign up for updates and to find out how you can help!
DONATE: Once we launch you can help by donating time to get the word out about the individual campaigns as well as donating money.
Thank you once again for your time and interest in this project. I am CMO of T160K and founder of INALJ. I appreciate your support. Library and LIS folks are the BEST!
Originally entitled What is T160K? And What Can You Do to Help?
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