Members of the De Anza College Chapter Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society started their annual Phi Theta Kappa book drive on campus about a month ago.
The club started its first book drive last year in collaboration with Better World Books, a nationwide company that organizes campus book drives and converts the donated books into funding for literacy programs such as the National Center of Family Literacy and Books for Africa.
Last spring, De Anza College students donated 2,138 textbooks to Africa through the book drive.
At the end of this quarter, officers and members of Phi Theta Kappa, an academic honor society at De Anza, will collect books from donation boxes spread around campus. The donated books are sent to Better World Books’ headquarters to be collected and categorized.
College and university textbooks are then sold on the internet and the profits are donated to the Books for Africa program, funding literacy programs for at least 37 countries on the continent.
De Anza College Phi Theta Kappa President Rada Turcanu said the society chose Africa because the countries there are the ones needing the most international help.
“I think that something we need to focus more on is on giving out information and raising awareness about what’s going on with the literacy in Africa,” she said.
Last year’s drive ranked the society at the third place for books contributed in the Nevada-California region.
“We did it just to help out. We didn’t get anything from it,” said Thien Nguyen, the webmaster vice president in charge of the drive this year.
The society was eligible to receive a 50 cent return for every book donated, but they refused it. The money was sent instead to a project for schools in tsunami- and civil war- affected regions of Sri Lanka.
The De Anza bookstore also donated 30 boxes of used textbooks to last year’s drive and will contribute another 30 boxes this year, bookstore director Jeri Montgomery said.
There are a total of four boxes for this year’s drive, located in front of the library, in the Student and Community Services Building, the Writing and Reading Center in ATC-309, and the Math/Science Tutorial Center in S-43. The last day for students to donate books this spring is June 27.
Nguyen doesn’t expect the club to do an independent book drive anytime soon. He said joining efforts with Better World Books proved to be more efficient and allows the drive to be more organized.
Paul Edison is a staff reporter for La Voz. Contact him at [email protected].
