When Los Altos Hills native Jonathan Thurston first traveled to Ghana in 2004, he was so struck by his experiences in the small West African nation that he booked a return trip two months after returning home. That summer, he stayed for three months.
“If you want an experience to change your life, go to Africa,” said the 1990 Los Altos High School graduate. “You are guaranteed a life-changing experience.” Thurston now works as digital book services manager at John Wiley and Sons in New York.
The experience that had such an impact on Thurston was a relatively simple request from an elementary schoolteacher in the village of Larabonga in the northern region of Ghana. The teacher asked for some paper for her class. When Thurston handed the woman a pad of 100 sheets, “She became speechless at a pad of paper,” he said. “She literally could not talk for several minutes.”
In 2007, Thurston helped establish the International School of Art, Business and Technology (ISABT), dedicated to working with schools in Ghana. The institution collects educational supplies such as pencils, paper, chalk and books for the Ghana schools, and “encourages pupils and teachers to publish their own books … to become authors,” according to its Web site.
“How do you learn without books?” Thurston asked. “I learned so much growing up by reading.”
ISABT shipped a 40-foot container with 35,000 books to Ghana last December. The San Francisco Public Library donated thousands of the texts, but most of them came from the San Jose Public Library.
The organization’s book drive struck a chord with Los Altos resident Richard Braugh, senior vice president of investments with UBS Financial. “It was very visionary. These kids in a very short time went from reading to publishing, and they became computer literate,” Braugh said in reference to the students in Ghana, whom Thurston had encouraged. Braugh forwarded a story about Thurston’s work in Africa that his wife had shown him to several friends and began researching ways to help.
“We took a while to (locate) sources for books,” Braugh said. “Pretty soon we were hauling books into our office.”
Braugh, chairman of 1stACT Silicon Valley in San Jose, credits Thurston’s enthusiasm and energy for drawing his interest to the book drive for Ghana.
“When you find someone who is passionate about something, you say, ‘That’s someone who can move the needle,’” Braugh said. “I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t something I thought would make long-term change.”
Thurston said ISABT plans another book drive in the fall. The group is investigating ways to expand the impact of its work, including establishing community centers in villages in Ghana.
“We like to do ambitious things,” Thurston said. “There’s no access for these kids to outside educational resources.”
Since his initial visit seven years ago, Thurston has returned to Ghana eight times. He currently manages the project from New York, coordinates the book drive in Silicon Valley and arranges the shipping and distribution in Ghana.
The project has taken on a new significance since the birth of his daughter, Eleanor. “Everyone wants their kids to be educated,” Thurston said. “This is important.”
For more information, visit www.isabt.org.
