Book Club is hosting a book drive to donate proceeds to Books for Africa, an organization that distributes books to underprivileged schools in Africa and sets up libraries there, Book Club co-president Sweksha Shaw said.
The drive began in early October and will continue to mid-November unless the club reaches its goal of 1500 donated books earlier, Shaw said. Already, students and teachers have donated approximately 500 books, she added.
“I have always wanted to do something like this to promote literacy because personally, books have been very beneficial to my education, and it’s how I initially learned to talk in English,” Shaw said. “I could read and write when I came here in fourth grade, but how to fluently speak in English, I really learned through rigorous reading. So I want somebody else to be able to experience that.”
Book Club set up boxes for collection in various classrooms, and club advisor and science teacher Kieu Pham offers her classroom as a space to store the books, she said.
“There are six bags (filled with books) there,” Pham said. “They haven’t collected all the books here yet, but that’s a lot of books.”
The club chose to donate to Books for Africa because of its clear mission statement, Book Club co-president Jeslyn Nguyen said.
“They had a purpose and it seemed like they had an actual impact on what they’ve done in the past,” Nguyen said.
This is the first drive the club has hosted, Nguyen said. Book Club was inspired to start one after finding out that a former MHS book club had organized a book drive, she said. Although officers were initially planning to create a series of monetary fundraisers and partner with the Milpitas Library and other clubs on campus, they decided to stick to a smaller-scale fundraiser for books for their first time hosting a drive, she added.
“What I want out of this is I want Book Club to do this annually, so I want our later officers to be able to host a book drive and eventually grow it in scale so that they can continue donating,” Nguyen said.