ANTIQUATED TEXTBOOKS SENT OVERSEAS
By Aaron Warn
The Collegian (California State University Fresno)
antiquated-textbooks-sent-overseas/
March 24 2010
Two campus organizations are striving to find a good home for unused
books and textbooks from the Kennel Bookstore.
Ron Durham, director of the Kennel Bookstore, said books that no
longer have any value to the school are donated to one of two campus
organizations. William Rice of the marketing and logistics department
heads one of them. Rice took it upon himself to collect unused books
from the Fresno State campus and ship them internationally.
"Just a few months ago we shipped about 7,000 books to Armenia,"
Rice said.
In all, Rice said he has been able to distribute about 60,000 books
to Armenia.
Armenia is the main recipient of Rice’s donations, but the country
is not the only one. Rice said he tries to focus on countries that
may not have these resources otherwise.
"It isn’t just Armenia though," Rice said. "I’ve also shipped thousands
of other books to places like Ethiopia and Kenya."
Rice, who has been involved in this process for 15 years, is not
only in charge of collecting the books that might be of good use to
other cultures, but is also in charge of finding a way to get them
to these countries. In doing this, he finds different airlines that
are willing to transport the textbooks into their home countries to
be used in schools and libraries.
"I try to go through them and find books that might have value to
specific cultures and ship them out to those specific countries,"
Rice said.
After Rice has sorted through the thousands of books that no longer
have any value to the school, there is still a large amount that
needs to find a home. Books that Rice does not collect are given to
the Golden Key International Honour Society.
>From there the books are shipped to Better World Books, a for-profit
social enterprise that collects used books and sells them online to
raise money for literacy initiatives worldwide.
Eric York, local president of the Golden Key Honour Society, said
his organization did its research and determined that Better World
Books would be the necessary recipient of the donated books.
"They just do such great work with places all over the world," York
said. "It was an easy decision as far as I’m concerned. They do an
amazing job at getting resources to places that really need them."
One of those places is Haiti. In an attempt to overcome its educational
challenges in the aftermath of January’s earthquake, Better World
Books announced on March 2 that they will begin the "Rebuild Haiti"
initiative. This will combine immediate aid with long-term efforts to
fund the restoration and equipment of schools, teacher training and
improvement of the quality of education and literacy in Haiti. Better
World Books has already made an initial donation of $10,000 to help
rebuild Haiti.
"As soon as we heard about the earthquake’s destruction in Haiti,
we knew we could leverage our powerful fundraising machine to help,"
said Better World Books CEO David Murphy. "After Hurricane Katrina,
people donated an enormous number of books which raised over $100,000
for the New Orleans Public Library. We know people want to respond
the same way to the Haiti crisis. We intend to see this initiative
through, as long as it takes."
Fresno State is one of about 1,800 college campuses that Better World
Books has accepted book donations from. In total, they have collected
more than 25 million donated books and raised $7.3 million in funding
for literacy and education.
"It’s just good to see that these unused books are going towards a
good cause and not being wasted just because we can no longer use
them," Durham said.