Meet Dubai expat who gives away hundreds of books for free, and once received donation from Bill Gates

When British expat in Dubai Kelly Harvarde put a little box of books outside her house in late 2019, she had no idea that it would turn strangers into her friends. “I just wanted people in the neighbourhood to enjoy more books,” she said. “However, it has resulted in a long-term friend circle that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

One such friend is Tariq Neduvanchery, who works as a driver in the neighbourhood. “Tariq’s dream is to start a business in Dubai and he often comes by to browse through books that could help him achieve his dream.”

Kelly now reserves such books for him and drops him a message when new donations come in. The last book she saved for him was the autobiography of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. “He loved it,” she said. “He said it motivated him to have even bigger dreams.”

Tariq, who is now a regular at her library and a good friend of Kelly’s family, often brings little tokens of love. “Last time, he got us a box of mangoes,” said Kelly. “They were the sweetest mangoes I have tasted.”

Bill Gates donation

Kelly, who has been living in the UAE for more than 15 years, set up Little Library outside her Jumeirah home just before the pandemic. Little Free Library is a global initiative that has 150,000 libraries in over 120 countries and aims to spread the love of reading among communities.

She has received and given away hundreds of books since she started the library. One morning she found a man putting 5 books inside her library. On closer inspection, she found that they were a donation from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, complete with a message from him inside it.

“I later found his blog post where he detailed how he had donated five of his favourite books to 100 Little Libraries all over the world,” she said. “I was honoured and humbled to have received a donation from him. I kept one book for myself. I am sure that the people who got it loved it.”

The running of the library is not Kelly’s job alone. Her 9-year-old daughter Aya is in charge of sorting books into categories from the donations they receive while her husband Alex Jeffries supports them by doing the repair and paintwork on it.

Community building

Kelly’s is one among just a handful of Little Libraries in the UAE. She feels like the library comes with the power to build communities. “One day, I had a friend drop off a collection of books,” she said. “She also had a box full of sheet music that her daughter used to play on the piano. She asked if anyone would want it. I took it, even though until then no one had ever asked for it.”

The very next day she had a visitor looking for sheet music. “It was a Pakistani gentleman whose daughter had just started taking piano lessons,” she said. “He had just come to browse through some books for his daughter and asked if I had any sheet music. I gave him most of the bunch I had and he almost had tears in his eyes. He was truly grateful for it. I don’t think these things are coincidence. There is a power of community building that this library has.”

Kelly also spoke about another regular visitor, Mattvey. “He is from Eastern Europe and is a very friendly person,” she said. “However, the books he picks are all about wars and intense subjects. So I asked him why he preferred to read such books and he said they help him get over his difficult days. Now, I reserve books for him and every time he comes, we chat for a while.”

Challenges

Kelly said that several challenges come with running the library. “We have had people try to steal the library several times,” she said. “So then we chained the library to the seat next to it. One morning we came out to find the library face down on the floor with its glass completely shattered. That was a sad day for us.”

Kelly said that these challenges had led the library to transform several times over the years. “Right now it is a very small library,” she said. “But when winter comes around, I want to make it bigger so now I am working with a carpenter in Satwa who is building a bigger library for me. I can’t wait for it to get here and we can have more books for more people.”

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