It's been a busy week in the Logistics office, starting and ending with a bang.  Monday found the Campus Division Support Agent (myself) navigating a very large truck through the streets of Chicago to pick up 9 pallets of books generously donated by the Chicago Public Library's Friends of the Blackstone Branch.  The streets of Chicago never felt so narrow, but with the help of a few dedicated volunteers, especially Betsy Glynn, my navigator, and Dina Weinstein, our contact at the book sale, we were able to get about 9000 books boxed up and loaded in under two hours.  Great job and thank you to everyone involved! 

Now Friday has finally arrived, and we ended our week in the warehouse by sending our second shipment of approximately 18,000 college text books directly to the Kampala International University in Uganda. 

We have more of these direct shipments scheduled and we will try to keep everyone updated as they go out.  In the meantime, everyone have a fantastic weekend, and keep those books coming!

Books for Africa a "key" priority
Ryersonian 10/11/2006, by Izabela Szydlo
http://www.ryersonline.ca/articles/539/1/Books-for-Africa-a-quotkeyquot-priority/Page1.html

The Golden Key Honour Society is trying to help open doors to literacy in Africa.

The group, which targets top students in each department, has partnered with a charity organization called Books for Africa.  The hope is to promote higher education in the continent which struggles with combating illiteracy.

“Our main goal is to collect textbooks which are no older than five years old,” said Vipin Khullar, president of Golden Key’s Ryerson chapter.

“If you’re trying to educate people in other countries all the books need to be up to date.”

The book drive, which will consist of boxes placed in high-traffic areas such as Jorgenson Hall, brought in about 700 books last semester.  Khullar said students can be expected to see boxes out next week.

“My goal is to raise more books than any school in the northeast region,” he said.  “With every event that we do I try to get Ryerson’s name out there and show a sense of community that the university has.”

Namarig Ahmed wants to help support the cause, but the second-year nursing student said that the campaign needs to be better advertised and students need to be made aware of what the boxes are.

“I’m definitely going to drop off some of my older texts,” she said.  “But I think people may pass the bin and say: “why should we send some random book to Africa?” without realizing that they collect a whole bunch of the same book and send it off.”

According to the Books for Africa website, since 1988 more than 13 million books have been donated in hopes of putting an end to illiteracy, which stands at 41 per cent among Africans over the age of 15.

The organization is partnered with a larger literacy campaign called Better World Books, which provides boxes and funding so that books can be shipped
directly to classrooms and libraries.  Books are sent to 26 countries, including Botswana, Senegal and Sudan.

Jennifer Hargreaves, director of Canadian operations for Golden Key, said that the campaign is not only positive but also reflective of her organization’s goals.

“It really supports our goals of supporting higher education and academic achievement,” she said.

“We’re helping students understand basic human rights and allowing them to take a more direct role in the educational process.”

By Sarah Lynne Reul, New England Regional Director.

As you may already know, Better World Books joined forces with a great new literacy partner over the summer. The World Education and Development Fund (a.k.a. “Worldfund”) is a young non-profit organization dedicated to reducing poverty in Latin America by funding high-quality education for impoverished children. Visit their website www.worldfund.org to learn more about the programs they support in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.

Worldfund’s mission is essential, as fewer than 30% of students in Latin America complete secondary school. The absence of an educated workforce is a critical factor stunting economic development and discouraging investment in Latin America. However, Worldfund is already making an impressive impact - in just three short years, they have already raised over $2 million to fund school networks that support more than 30,000 children across Latin America.

If you choose Worldfund as your partner this semester, here’s the impact your qualifying books can make:

500 books: Fund a one-year student scholarship at a top quality school 
1,000 books: Fund the purchase of materials for a 35-student classroom
2,000 books: Fund four student scholarships at a top quality school
5,000 books: Fund a teacher’s salary for a full year
10,000 books: Fund two teacher’s salaries for a full year

We’ve already developed new posters for Worldfund campus book drives, complete with space to write the name of your student group– see below! Better World Books is moving towards greener materials – all Worldfund posters will be printed with biodegradable “eco-ink” on 25% post-consumer recycled paper, in a carbon-neutral printing process.

Better World Books is proud to include Worldfund as a potential partner for your campus book drive this semester, along with our other great literacy partners, Books for Africa, Room to Read, and the National Center for Family Literacy. Talk to your Regional Director today to find out how you can get involved in a book drive for Worldfund!

 

By Elena Kuzmin, Co-Vice President of the University of Toronto’s Golden Key Chapter. 

This past spring, our Golden Key chapter collected 94 cartons of books to benefit Books for Africa, making it one of the most successful drives in the Northeast region. The strength of our book drive can be largely attributed to our extensive promotional campaign. Promoting our book drive helped us to do more than let people know where they could donate books.  It also helped us connect the students and faculty memebers to the cause of African literacy and education.  To get the word out around campus we used flyers, posters, mass emails and made class announcements.  We also had an article about the book drive written in the campus newspaper. 

Of all the promotional methods we utilized, class presentations were the most effective.  We found that posters, flyers, emails and newspaper articles were all great ways to spread the word, but they often blended into a vast sea of campus postings and daily emails.  However, when we were in front of a class making an announcement about the book drive, there was no way the students were going to miss us. 

Hearing about the book drive from fellow students helped our classmates to understand the impact their donation would have on global literacy. It also helped them to understand how easy it would be for them to get involved and become part of the solution.  After all, making a difference is as easy as dropping a book in a box.   

The best part was that organizing such an extensive promotional campaign didn’t require too much time.  Since we started promoting our book drive by the middle of the semester, we were able to exercise all our promotional options and have everything in place well before finals started.  On average, getting everything set and ready to go only took one to two hours a week. 

I wouldn’t recommend replacing posters, flyers, emails, and newspaper articles with class announcements, but I would definitely recommend using class announcements to compliment them.  It worked for our organization and it will definitely work for yours!

By Damara Lauren Catlett, Northern Mid-Atlantic Regional Director.

For too many people literacy vs. illiteracy has become a question of life vs. death. Understanding the correlation between illiteracy, disease and poverty is not intended to contribute to fear and helplessness felt by many when observing the severity of HIV/AIDS crisis. Rather these studies are a cue for what we can all do today to combat this pandemic. UNESCO reports that: 

“Given the impact of the epidemic worldwide, with nearly 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the role of literacy and non-formal education needs to be fully acknowledged and promoted as part of the overall response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

The most at risk population for contracting HIV/AIDS are the rural poor, particularly woman and girls who comprise 70% of the world’s impoverished population.  Our international literacy partners Books for Africa, Room to Read and World Fund serve the most vulnerable communities by helping them obtain the life long tool of literacy which assists in the reduction of poverty and access to education and appropriate information with regard to health related issues.

Although, our book drives encourage the small and simple act of donating a used textbook, the collective impact and results of these acts of kindness are anything but small. What’s so exciting about Better World Books is that by addressing illiteracy, one of the factors contributing to disease and poverty, we are able to provide a tangible way to address the gargantuan statistics and despondency surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

 

Mary Murphy writes:

Recently, I was on the United Nations Website as I know that the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has long been a strong supporter of literacy to combat poverty worldwide.

I was surprised to find in his Executive Summary of the Millenium Report: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, an alarming chapter on the environment.

In addition to freedom from want and from fear, Mr. Annan writes, the world now faces an urgent need to realize a third freedom, which the UN's founders could not have anticipated: "the freedom of future generations to sustain their lives on this planet".  He continues, “We have been plundering our children’s heritage to pay for environmentally unsustainable practices in the present.”

Environmental sustainability is everybody’s challenge.  I am very proud of the fact that Better World Books philosophy is congruent with Kofi Annan’s plea to protect the health of our planet.  We have saved more than 1,200 tons  (over 5 million pounds) of books from the landfill….and we have never thrown one book away.

We couldn’t have achieved this without our student organizations taking the lead on campus.  It’s amazing to think that at a University with an undergraduate enrollment of 5,000 students…and each student has, on average, 5 college books with an ISBN # in a given semester…..there are 25,000 books that could be used to help others.  Donating a textbook is such a simple, yet powerful way to make a difference!

Check out the new website for the National Center for Family Literacy at www.famlit.org.  You can find information about the partnership with Better World Books on the front page under success stories!

A few of us here at Better World Books recently had an opportunity to speak with a reporter from The Michigan Daily, and they have run an article on our book drives in Michigan.

In the Spring of 2006, Better World Books coordinated book drives at 32 schools in the state of Michigan, totaling close to 20,000 books. Michigan State University collected the most books of any school in Michigan, sending in over 5,000 books. The book drive at Michigan State was lead by their "Books 4 Africa" student group. All the books collected in that drive went to benefit Books for Africa.

With over 150 colleges and universities in the state of Michigan, I hope we can have a lot of success with book drives there this year. I expect to see a lot of healthy competition between the The University of Michigan and Michigan State Universityto see who can bring in more books.

The Michigan Region of Phi Theta Kappa, the International Honor Society of the 2 year college, is encouraging all of their chapters to run a book drive with Better World Books this year. I am expecting great things from the state of Michigan this year! Below is a picture from the MSU B4A student group:

 

 

 .

News Release:  9/27/06

Believe it or not, there are millions of children and families who want to read but don’t have access to libraries or worthy resources.

That is about to change for thousands of American Indian families. Much needed books are making their way to American Indian parents and children in family literacy programs across the nation thanks to Better World Books and the National Center for Family Literacy.

The effort will support the literacy development of families participating in the Family and Child Education (FACE) program funded by the Bureau of Indian Education and in operation in states including Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico and Mississippi. The FACE program is coordinated by NCFL and is the nation’s longest running family literacy program.

Many of the sites are located in remote desert or plains areas where there are no main libraries and schools have limited resources, according to NCFL. More than 25,000 books will be given to families with children birth to eight-years-old.

“We’re going to be providing books to a lot of families that just don’t have books in the home,” said NCFL’s Sharyl Emberton who coordinates NCFL’s services to the FACE program. “Families who attend programs in these schools will be able to select a variety of books. They will be able to build their own home libraries.”

The high-quality books are the result of partnerships with over 500 local libraries who give their discarded and donated books to Better World Books to benefit their literacy partners.

Better World Books initiated its partnership with NCFL immediately following the 2005 Hurricane Season to provide a long-term solution to the social and economic devastation and has contributed more than $80,000 of cash funding to support the organization’s literacy initiatives.

In addition to the FACE program, NCFL works with literacy programs throughout the U.S., helping families in need gain necessary literacy skills. Each year, NCFL programs help more than 60,000 individuals by supporting programs including the Hispanic Learning Institute, the Bureau of Indian Education’s Family and Child Education program, and—most recently—providing relief to families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

 

Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society of two year colleges, has announced that Al Gore will be the keynote speaker at their International Convention in Nashville, TN in the spring of 2007.  As part of the environmental theme, PTK's international service project this year is Operation Green.

I am so excited to see that an honors society and service organization as large and influental as PTK is taking to heart the messages we are continually seeing in the media about the environmental crisis our planet is experiencing.

I saw the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and watched the Tom Brokaw special on the Discovery Channel called "Global Warming: What You Need to Know" and I was inspired to take action and make an impact.  I went out and bought the energy saving lightbulbs, and I have been trying to recycle more, and think about my energy and gas consumption.  I know that it seems small, and like these actions don't get us anywhere, but it is when a group of people make these changes, and influence the decisions of others that change really takes place. 

A Better World Books book drive is a great opportunity to take action and empower yourself, your student organization, your community, to come together and take action. By leading a book drive on your campus you will be encouraging students to donate their no-value books rather then throw them in the trash.   Thousands of students have made this choice, and the result has been 5 million pounds of books being diverted from the landfill through the BWB book drive program.

"By the year 2100, in the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, our world will be a drastically different place," says Tom Brokaw in the Discovery Channel documentary. 

For the students in this country, the young people, this is our future.  Now is the time to take action.

My name is Andy, and I have just come on board as the new RD for the Northwest.  I have strong interest in international affairs. My personal observations all around the world highlighted the importance of literacy and education in empowering individuals.

I came to the Northwest to pursue a graduate degree in student affairs. I have also worked as an academic advisor for post-secondary students interested in international education programs.

Far more important than any materialistic rewards a job may offer, I believe for me it is important to work to promote education and philosophical empowerment. 

From: Aliya Haq, Western Regional Director

Can literacy prevent fires? I say yes, at least for certain kinds. I believe the link of illiteracy to poverty, disease, and violence cannot be ignored. Yesterday I was reading about the current discussions at the United Nations. It seems like most of the talks at the UN are taken up by a countless crises like Iran's nuclear program, or the Darfur crisis in Sudan (though it seems that Darfur should get more attention, considering its a full-on genocide – but that’s just me). Debates among top government officials revolve around extinguishing metaphorical fires around the globe.

Terrorism, genocide, and undisclosed nuclear weapons programs definitely indicate a bleak and frightening future unless we find some solutions – and find them fast – so I can’t say I blame the UN for the current discussions. When 200,000 people have been killed, and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes into refugee camps in Darfur, it’s not surprising that fighting poverty, establishing basic health care, building infrastructure, or developing education is taking a backseat.

As I was reading about it all in the paper, part of me feared that these horrible crises might never come to an end. I mentioned before that the link of illiteracy to poverty, disease, and violence cannot be ignored. Of course, the UN and developed countries provide a great deal of aid to fight poverty, which I'm not discounting, but perhaps we need more groups that are specifically focused on literacy.  There is a frightening percentage of the world’s population that can't read (20% -- that’s one in five people).

Without access to quality education, democracy cannot function and intolerance cannot be overcome.  It may be a bold statement to say that literacy will prevent genocide, but I definitely believe it. As governments need to put out fires around the world, perhaps we need more groups like Books for Africa, Room to Read, NCFL, and Worldfund to help prevent fires in the first place.

By: Andy, Northwest Regional Director

Some people may argue that funding literacy programs abroad, sending Western books overseas, training teachers, or building educational infrastructure will inevitably further export Western culture and contribute to Western cultural imperialism. Others may argue that literacy programs in places like Latin America, Asia, and Africa will ultimately tamper with indigenous cultures by flooding them with materialism and capitalist propaganda, transforming charming native peoples into willing consumers fluent in Western values. I remember reading the transcript from an interview with a prominent American politician who claimed that the U.S. economy will benefit from the economic and educational betterment of developing countries, be it through the buying power they will later hold or the human talent they will produce.

I backpacked throughout the former communist bloc of Central and East Europe in the mid-1990s. Particularly in rural Romania, the landscapes were dotted with subsistence farmers, and horse drawn carriages far outnumbered cars. Foreign influence was difficult to find from what I saw, and I remember seeing only one "Western" business (McDonald's, of course) in the downtown district of a mid-sized city. Although official numbers indicate high literacy rates in Romania, the economic despair of the countryside meant the lack of opportunity written as anguish on the people's faces. People of the same age as I, with the bulk of their lives ahead of them to establish self-worth and enjoy personal achievement, faced an immediate future of high unemployment, poor infrastructure, corruption, and limited access to resources enjoyed by highly-industrialized countries.

If "the West" brings its educational resources to a country in which they previously did not exist, a footprint is forever left on that culture. Whatever your opinion of these effects may be, they snowball in an influence to be felt for centuries. Contemporary German, for example, is loaded with technical terms and colloquialisms imported from America. Assuming the anecdotal story I heard is accurate, contemporary English is approximately 40% French in origin, all of this as the result of a relatively short Norman occupation. Imported culture may not only influence language, but with the deepest personal values of a people. Asian youth are repeatedly accused of rejecting traditionalism in favor of "Western" ideals. One may argue that a culture takes millennia to develop, but is irrevocably changed the second it comes in contact with foreign influence. But who is to say these transformations should be considered negative? Are they infections or simply a dialogue with other world cultures?


When returning to rural Romania again several years later, I noticed the economic progress the country had made in the short time I was away. More cars filled the streets, shops slowly filled empty historic districts, and tractors worked a few fields. I was surprised by the considerable progress that had been made. Yet I overheard several other tourists commenting about how sad it was that rural Romania was modernizing, and that they were not having the kind of authentic Old World experience they had years before. I listened to them with disgust for their selfishness. As I have discussed with a few individuals from Better World Books before, I wonder how people can be so self-centered as to say to a people, "Stay in the past so we can have a more enjoyable vacation."

Importing literacy and education does not mean the death of a culture, but rather the birth of a Culture of Literacy, one that embraces the future while honoring the past. Respecting a culture does not mean resisting progress and rejecting a higher standard of living; respecting a culture involves documenting it as best as we can in its full integrity and vigor, while marrying indigenous traditions and values within the scope of a more capable culture progressing with the rest of the world. Literacy gives individuals the tools to record their own history, experience new ones, and join the world on its march towards an ever-increasingly higher standard of living. It's astonishingly selfish to curse anyone to forever sweat with hand tools while sitting in an air-conditioned rail car bound for a 4-star hotel.