Posted By: Mary Murphy, Senior South Regional Director

The Better World Books project was an idea that arose in March 2006 at the Phi Theta Kappa Carolinas Regional Convention in Clemmons, North Carolina. Mary Murphy spoke on the benefits of this wonderful program, and our chapter’s officers knew immediately that this would be a project that each and every one of us would want to participate in. Once permission was granted by our college campus’s administration, we advertised the event on campus with posters, flyers, and emails to both our chapter’s members and the college’s faculty. The College Bookstore, our on-campus textbook retailer, helped promote the event by instructing students to bring any unwanted textbooks or textbooks with no resale value to our office. We offered a book pickup to any faculty member that wished to collect books in their office from students, and we set up a donation box outside of the Phi Theta Kappa office in our Student Services building. We kept these services available not only throughout book buyback days, but all throughout each semester. Beginning in May 2006 and continuing on through today, our chapter has made this event a resounding success, collecting 81 cartons of books for Better World Books. We feel that it has been an incredibly successful event, due not only to the advertisement on campus, but the passion driving each participant. Everyone involved with this project did so out of the desire for keeping our local landfill free of textbooks, and by empowering the next generation through our literacy partner, Room To Read. We look forward to participating in this project for years to come.

Callasandra Michaels
Vice President of Records
Alpha Tau Rho chapter, Phi Theta Kappa
Coastal Carolina Community College

Posted By: Niko Tomlinson, Senior Midwest Director

    The fantastic Western Wisconsin Technical College Phi Theta Kappa chapter (Beta Nu Chi!) joined the Better World Books team to run a book drive in support of Room to Read in the Spring of 2006.  The drive went well and they collected 24 cartons of books.  But they had just begun.  By coordinating with other college bookstores in the La Crosse area, the group was able to nearly double their Spring 06 output in this Fall drive (the Fall semester is usually trumped by the Spring semester 2 to 1!), collecting an astounding 47 cartons!  BWB Fall semester drives ended last week on February 15^th and the group notified me they had collected an additional 26 cartons of books- a great start for the Spring semester!

  Headed by advisor Linda Duffy, the amazing students of the Beta Nu Chi chapter are going to use their Fall scholarship check to help offset their traveling expenses to the April International Phi Theta Kappa convention ; this y ear being held in Nashville, TN.

Great work Beta Nu Chi!
-Niko

The Beta Nu Chi Chapter

Posted by: Aliya Haq, Northern CA Regional Director

Here's a great testimonial from Jeff Woods, Director of the Sonoma State Community Service Program (JUMP) which oversees their Alternative Spring Breaks. They run FANTASTIC book drives every semester.

Here's Jeff hard at work on a Spring Break trip:


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And here's Jeff's advice and testimonial:

"At Sonoma State University, JUMP, the community service program, started our Alternative Breaks Program right around the time that we learned about Better World Books.  We had been utilizing BreakAway, and we knew we had to find a successful fundraising opportunity that could generate lots of money for our trips as we didn't want the participants to have to pay for them entirely. 



My advice to any Alternative Breaks Programs is to HOLD BOOK DRIVES EVERY SEMESTER.  It's easy and a great fundraiser.  Better World Books is a great organization to work with and now Better World Books and BreakAway have partnered.  It's a win win situation for all involved.
 
A couple of key suggestions for you regarding book drives:
 
1.  To get books from students, put donation boxes everywhere across your campus - places where students eat, in the residential community, in department offices, at the bookstores, major academic buildings, the student union, everywhere. 
 
2.  Ask faculty to donate books as well.  They get books sent to them all the time.  Faculty who are retiring, faculty who are moving offices, and faculty who are leaving your campus are all outstanding potential donors. 
 
3.  If you can, accept book donations at your office all year round.  The faculty members I was talking about above may not get to cleaning out their offices until the summer.
 
4.  Work with your campus bookstore.  If you can, put donation boxes right next to the textbook buyback.  When students can't sell a book back, they will drop it in the donation box (make sure that the bookstore staff encourage students to do that). 
 
5.   If the bookstore doesn't want a donation bin next to textbook buyback, put it out in front of the store.  You'll still get books (plus you have donation bins all across campus already).
 
Good Luck!

Jeff Woods
JUMP Program Coordinator
Sonoma State University
www.sonoma.edu/as/jump

Posted by: Abby Rae LaCombe, Rocky Mountain Regional Director

    Hello all!!  My name is Abby LaCombe and I am the new Rocky Mountain Regional Director.  I’m taking over for Erin Riska after her excellent times coordinating drives in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta.  I’m so excited to be a member of the team at Better World Books!  It’s rare that one finds a job working with so many great people who all want to see improvement in our world!
    I’d like to give a shout-out to all of the campus reps in my region.  You all did a great job this past fall!  Thank you so much for all of the welcoming e-mails, I’ve really appreciated the dedication and enthusiasm I’ve seen so far.  This spring we will do great things like move mountains of books and give people all over the world the opportunity to read!  Please contact me if you are interested in getting a book drive going on your campus, I’d love to hear from you!

Abby's roomate and Abby on a hiking adventure

Posted by: Yanna C. Ogilvie, Midwest Regional Director

     Illinois’ Waubonsee Community College Phi Theta Kappa lead an amazing book drive this fall collecting over 120 cartons of books to support Room to Read! Although their name may be difficult to say, it wasn’t difficult for them to achieve such a positive response from the student body. With exceptional leadership and hard work they have had another successful year leading a book drive at Waubonsee. Thanks to all the members of the Waubonsee Phi Theta Kappa and to all the people that made this book drive a success. Keep up the great work!

Here are some photos of this awesome group working hard for literacy…

From left to right is Bailey Standish, Tammy Caltagirone, Michelle Beltran and Mario Llamas.


From left to right is Jennifer Wesson and Bailey Standish.

Posted By: Lee Blumenschine, Northeast Regional Director 

Travel 370 kilometers east of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and you will find the coffee producing city of Hirna.  As the capital of the Tullo district, Hirna is an administrative center whose schools serve the greater Tullo district and the surrounding districts of Mesela, Doba, and half of the Gorogutu district.  The challenge of meeting the educational needs of so many communities has been compounded by an overall lack of resources.  Consequently, the Hirna Secondary School, with only 13 functional class rooms and very few books is only able to accommodate a fraction of the region’s students.   

In November of 2006 Oren’s Daily Roast, a specialty coffee seller in NYC, teamed up with Better World Books to raise money to rebuild the Hirna Secondary School library.  Known as The Hirna Library Project, this is part of a larger initiative to rebuild the entire Hirna Secondary School.

Oren’s Daily Roast is currently accepting book donations at eight of their NYC locations.  All donations will be offered for sale online and the profits will go towards the reconstruction of the school library, proving the students of Hirna with much needed books a brighter future.  To learn more about this project please visit http://www.orensdailyroast.com/cat/Book+Drive+-+Ethiopia.html. 

             To donate books to benefit the Hirna Library Project please visit any of the following Oren’s Daily Roast store locations…

• 31 Waverly Place (btw University & Green)
• 434 Third Avenue (btw 30^th & 31^st)
• 1144 Lexington Avenue (btw 79^th & 80^th)
• Grand Central Market (43^rd & Lex)
• 33 east 58^th street (btw Madison & Park Ave)
• 985 Lexington Avenue (at 71^st street)
• 1574 First Avenue (btw 81^st and 82^nd)
• 2882 Broadway (112^th & 113^th)
  

Posted by: Sarah Lynne Reul, Senior East Coast Regional Director

This past weekend, I was lucky to attend the East Coast Conference on Hunger & Homelessness at Boston University. It was a exciting experience – with nearly 300 enthusiastic students and activists attending, the energy levels were tangible! Every one of these students is participating on wonderful service projects to improve the lives of people in their communities, and hearing about the projects was inspirational!

Every Spring, the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness hosts this regional conference focused on hunger, homelessness, and poverty-related issues. After hosting a successful national conference this fall at the University of Southern California, the National Student Campaign organized this past weekend’s east coast event with workshops, panel discussions, innovative programming ideas, and fun networking opportunities. Here’s the website for the summit, with more info: http://www.studentsagainsthunger.org/ecsummit/ecsummit.asp?id2=28639.

The National Student Campaign Against Hunger & Homelessness is committed to ending hunger and homelessness in America by educating, engaging, and training students to directly meet individuals’ immediate needs while advocating for long-term systemic solutions. You can learn more  by visiting their website: http://www.studentsagainsthunger.org/

Many thanks to the organizers & students who made this conference such a great event – here are a couple pictures from the weekend!

Posted By: Damara Lauren Catlett, Northern Mid-Atlantic Regional Director

Project Educate, a non-profit organization working to improve educational standards and infrastructure in Zambia, runs several drives each semester in partnership with Better World Books. This is a wonderful opportunity for students not only to support Books for Africa but also to help Project Educate raise the much needed funds to support their work throughout Zambia.

The funds generated from last semester’s drives helped to finance the shipment of 400 computers to Mongu! This shipment enabled Project Educate to provide equipment to the Mongu Teacher Training College, the Lewanika General Hospital Nursing School and Project Educate’s newly founded Community Support and Resource Center. Prior to this shipment, the nursing school had a ratio of 1 computer for every 80 students. This figure has drastically improved to 1 computer for every 4 students!

This semester, Project Educate needs your help to finance their latest initiative to ship desperately needed medical and pharmaceutical supplies to Lewanika General Hospital in Zambia's Western province. The hospital is a 600 bed facility that serves an estimated population of 200,000 people.

To learn more about Project Educate’s mission and how you can help, please visit www.project-educate.org

                  

Here are some great photos from Worldfund's Mano Amiga partner school in Acapulco, Mexico. The pictures are from the Worldfund Executive Director's (Luanne Zurlo's) recent visit to the school. Education in action!