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COURTESY ANNIE FOLEY

Foley reads to a group of children during her visit to Kenya in July.

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KEVIN GUTTING

Foley prepared a suitcase full of books and supplies for a trip to Liberia in August.“We generally bring them with us in our suitcases, which is why right now I’m pretty sure my suitcase is over the 50-pound weight limit,” she said before leaving.

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KEVIN GUTTING

Annie Foley of Easthampton volunteers with LitWorld, a group that promotes literacy and distributes donated books in Africa. She just returned from a trip to Kenya July 31 and prepared a suitcase full of books and supplies for a trip to Liberia Aug. 22.

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KEVIN GUTTING

Easthampton resident Annie Foley, a graduate student at UMass, does literacy work in Africa in the summers.

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COURTESY ANNIE FOLEY

Foley reads a copy of “Mouse Paint,” by Ellen Stoll Walsh, to school children during a visit to Kenya in July.

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COURTESY ANNIE FOLEY

Foley reads to children during a visit to Kenya in July. She volunteers with LitWorld, a group that promotes literacy and distributes donated books in Africa.

EASTHAMPTON - The term "taking things for granted" took on new meaning for Easthampton resident Annie Foley this summer when she delivered new books to children in Kenya, for whom school attendance is not expected, and books are like secret treasures.

Foley, who brought the books in late July, said it's an experience she will not soon forget. "When I walked in with the books it was the most joyful I've seen children in my 15 years of working with them," she said.

Nowadays, summer for Foley, 31, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, means a few trips back and forth to Africa, where she gives new books to students as part of her work to promote literacy for the nonprofit organization LitWorld.

Her work with LitWorld most recently took her to Kenya for a week in late August, when she made her fourth trip to the country in just over a year. While there, she taught teaching workshops, led empowerment programs for women and girls and delivered books to schools, all in hopes of improving lives through literacy.

"In the past year it has definitely become one of my biggest priorities," Foley said of her volunteer work with LitWorld in Kenya and Liberia. "It's great to go back there and see the changes. Our instruction has really changed the way the teachers there teach."

LitWorld, based in New York City, has been promoting literacy and empowerment around the world for three years.

"Our work centers on literacy and getting the students to have more voice in the class," Foley said Aug. 21, the day before she left for Kenya. "What we do is give staff development programs to teachers there, and we also run girls' clubs and women's wellness workshops. Again, it's about giving people a voice. The clubs focus on women finding a sense of voice and uses writing and storytelling as a way to do that."

LitWorld volunteers also work with two companies, Scholastic Inc. and Pearson, to bring donated books to the schools in Africa that need them. "We generally bring them with us in our suitcases, which is why right now I'm pretty sure my suitcase is over the 50-pound weight limit," she said.

Foley, who grew up in Billerica, Mass., first got involved with LitWorld several years ago when she met the organization's founder and president, Pam Allyn, while teaching high-needs children in Bronx, N.Y. as a teaching fellow.

Foley moved to Easthampton three years ago to work as a kindergarten teacher at the Crocker Farm Elementary School in Amherst and began working on her doctorate at UMass, but her encounter with Allyn inspired Foley to get involved with LitWorld.

Since her first trip to Kenya in the summer of 2009, Foley has made connections with allies in Africa who continue her work promoting literacy once she's back home. One woman that Foley especially connected with was Benta, an HIV-positive single mother living in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, that she met at a women's workshop.

"I fell fast in love with her, she was so honest about her situation," Foley said. "In February she said she was trying to start a school, and when I went back I saw it. It's called the Hope Center. It makes me so happy, it's the perfect example of hope in the face of real challenges."

Indeed, Foley said hope is a defining characteristic of many of the Kenyans and Liberians she has met on her trips.

"People are really hopeful and positive, even amongst really intense need," she said. "It's a total culture shock. I am astonished how people with so little can be so happy and then, when I come back, how people with so much can be so needy."

While conducting the staff development programs for teachers on earlier trips to Kenya, Foley said she was impressed with how teachers there can teach so many students with so little resources.

"In Kenya they just enforced free primary school for all, but there are no additional teachers or facilities so often there is one teacher with 90 students of all ages," she said.

"One teacher at a workshop raised her hand and asked, 'how do you reach that one kid who never participates?' That really made me think of the universality of teaching, because that's a worry that all teachers have. But how do you answer that, when there's 90 kids in a class?"

Now that her summer trips to Africa are done for the season, Foley will focus on earning her doctoral degree, in children, families and schools, from the education department at UMass. She will continue working with LitWorld from her home in Easthampton, and the students, teachers and others she met in Africa will be in her thoughts as she prepares for class, she said.

"Especially when the school year is just beginning, for me it's an opportunity to think about how blessed I am just to go to the store and buy pens and paper," Foley said. "I really feel I get so much from it, it's such a gift for me."

Rebecca Everett can be reached at reverett@gazettenet.com.