GLP/Pingry
School South Africa Book Drive Collects Over 50,000 Books!
February-June 2007.- Students, parents and teachers at the Pingry School kicked off their book drive on February 2nd. Spearheaded by students from the Bianco, Carver, Ramaswamy-Shekhar, Steele and Vanech families, the initial goal was to collect 25,000 books along with the necessary funds to ship them to South Africa this summer. However, the group ended up collecting twice that amount!
Critical to the succes of this book drive was the way parents and then general community members from all across central New Jersey came out in support of the initiative. A most special acknowledgement has to be extended to the Headmaster as well as the faculty and staff of the Pingry School who went out of their way to support the students. The commitment was to the extent that Headmaster Nathaniel Conard supported the use of a room to sort and pack the books for the duration of the drive and the Director of Facilities, Mr. Michael Virzi arranged to provide pallets for the packed books and assisted the volunteers in how to stack and shrink wrap the finished collections.
Led by Christina Vanech, Emma and Chloe Carver, more than 150 volunteers came to the Pingry campus on Saturday, Feb. 24, to sort through some 14,000 donated books. These included several thousands collected by Emma and Chloe's brothers, Sean and Reeve, along with their classmate Neeraj Shekhar, who concentrated on running book drives in the Pingry Elementary and Middle Schools.
Founded in 1891, Pingry now has 1,000 students on
its two campuses in New Jersey. Students come from twelve counties and
over ninety municipalities.
The decision to support this project in aid of South African school children
is an extension of the school's honor code, that: "They
should act as responsible members of the community, working for the common
good rather than solely for personal advantage. They should honor the
rights of others, conducting themselves at all times in a moral and decent
manner
while at Pingry and throughout their lives as citizens of and contributors
to the larger community of the world."
With such a successful start, the drive got a big boost when Mike Steele, drawing on his decades of experience in transportation and logistics, helped the volunteers reach out to willing companies and facilitated the arrangements for the container to South Africa. With that headache out of the way, the students could concentrate all their energies on book collecting.
Other New Jersey Schools Join-in To Support GLP/Pingry Book Drive
Throughout Middle Jersey more than a dozen schools decided to support our dream of creating libraries for South African School children as well as for children living in orphanages. Our point people, Christina Vanech, Emma Carver and Chloe Carver began spreading the word about the bookdrive with help from school mates Elizabeth Moore and Ross Millard. When Ross mentioned it to his siblings who attend different schools, they were so interested that Jane Steele (luckily for us) with the support of Anne Delaney and Denise Vanech, encouraged them to propose that we expand the drive to any interested nearby schools.
Christina's brother Nicky, a
fifth grader at Darcy School, quickly got his entire school
involved. 
At the Willow School, Lilly Steele approached her Deputy Headmaster, Dr. Michael Kris to coordinate a school-wide book drive during the month of April.
Francis Steele led the drive at the Far Hills Country Day School where she saw the school community rally together to end up collecting over 8,000 books in fantastic condition.
Charlotte
Steele and Ally Millard led the drive at Kent
Place and then brought their school mates out on several weekends to sort and pack at the collecting site that Pingry provided. Other schools that jumped on board included the Golden Door
Charter School, Harding Township School, Millburn and Summit
High
Schools, the Purnell School and the Cottage School.
Several community groups and institutions such as the Bernardsville Cub Scouts, the Clarence Dillon Library, the Chester Library and Kangaroo Kidz have all contributed.
More than just simply donating, many of our participants are using the book drive as a learning opportunity to learn about and highlight the wonderful diversity of cultures in Africa.
The book drive ran from February to May 2007. Books were also collected at Christ the King Church in New Vernon. A dozen students and their parents along with several teachers and the middle school's librarian also intend to travel to South Africa where they will help create a library in a school located in Randfontein.
Akintunde family gives back to Nigerian schools
January 2007.- When Sade Akintunde and her daughters Moyo and Olomade sat down to reflect on the one year anniversary of the passing of father Abiodun Akintunde, the memory of his commitment to education stood out. Therefore, they decided that nothing could better honor a person who saw education as the way forward than to help as many others as they could in their drive for learning. As such the family has decided to raise enough funds that will enable the shipment of 30,000 books to schools in Nigeria that are being supported by GLP.
The family hopes to fundraise the cost of shipping by May 2007. When the books arrive in Nigeria, they will then visit to help distribute and install the books in recipient schools. For more information please contact Sade at akintundea@bellsouth.net.
Teen's bar mitzvah project to help literacy
in Kenya
December 2006.- Matthew Wille has an abiding love of books and the Flanders teen plans to extend his interest to promote literacy in Kenya. Matthew, 13, is collecting books and funds as part of the community action requirement for his bar mitzvah. The coming of age ceremony is scheduled for March 10 at Temple Hatikvah in Flanders.
Matthew hopes to collect 1,000 books and $4,000 in donations to pay the shipping costs. Global Literacy Project will in turn donate 19,000 books to the 1,000 collected by Matthew. All the books will be sent to Chamisri section of Kenya. For more information please contact Matthew via Viki Willie at mjcvw@verizon.net.
Oak Knoll School First Grade Makes A Difference
November 2006.- Megan Watkins is a first grade teacher at Oak Knoll School (Summit, NJ), who decided to give new life to her "Spotlight on Literacy" reading system. She and her students donated enough books for 18 community learning center students.
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Our "Global Citizens" include wonderful members of local organizations, such as perhaps Lions and Rotary Clubs or other NGOs, that help collect, sort and distribute books to happy recipients around the world.
South Amboy/Sayreville
Rotary Chapter Helps Give Gift of Reading to Tobago Children
2003/2004.- GLP was very pleased to work with the South Amboy/Seyreville chapter of Rotary International in collecting books to contribute to primary school library collections on the small Caribbean island of Tobago.
With the help of the Rotarians, GLP eventually shipped over 18,000 books to Tobago where volunteer Jane Young-Anglin, working with the Tobago Rotary chapter (District 7030), spent two months distributing and installing the books in various school libraries, such as Mason Hall Primary seen here.
This was yet another example of the generosity shown by so many global citizens!
"The Power of Literacy and Why Global Citizenship Matters," by Emeka Onukaogu Emeka Onukaogu describes the power of literacy in a letter sent to Denniston Bonadie in February 2002: "Before 1966, it was common for the Nigerian primary and secondary school children to own books. Extensive and intensive reading was promoted at the school, community, regional and national levels through festivals of art and culture. Libraries were common in primary and secondary schools. State governments had mobile libraries that made books available in rural areas all over the country. Opportunity to self-develop through home education and correspondence schools were common. Rapid Results College, School of Careers and Wolsley Hall were some correspondence schools that capitalized on the desire by our people to profit from long distance education. Long distance, education thrived then because books were available everywhere..." "I am, for instance, a living testimony of what books and reading empowerment can do. My parents were only able to give me basic secondary school education. During my secondary school days, I was taught Literature and English Language by an American Peace Corps volunteer from Massachusetts - one Mr. B.A Cornel. He taught me how to read and encouraged my colleagues and me to read extensively. Thus after my secondary school education, I was able to self-teach myself at home and accordingly I took the University of London General Certificate of Education (A Level) examination at home. I passed at a sitting all the 3 papers I enrolled for in that examintion. If I had gone to a higher school, I would have spent two years to get that certificate. However, because of the reading empowerment I acquired in my secondary school days through the help of Mr. B.A Cornel, I stayed at home and through self-tutoring, was able in less than 9 months to prepare for and pass that examination." "Today, the privileges the Nigerian child enjoyed in the 60's regarding book ownership are nowhere to be found. When the Nigerian Military took over governance in 1966, it ...destroyed our educational system...With the destruction of the book culture, the critical thinking ability of the Nigerian child was crippled... Today, the Military is no more in authority. We have regained our freedom... One way to maintain our freedom is to revive and revitalize the reading/book culture in our country. That is why the Reading Association of Nigeria, which I head, is excited about your [Global Literacy Project] promise and willingness to ship books to Nigeria..." |
