Birthday Box (With Friends!)

So, for my birthday I decided to have my friends bring books for the project instead of presents. I told them that they were going to a school library in the Philippines. They were so enthusiastic, we collected enough books to fill up half of a big box! The books varied in difficulty. Some were Big thick books and some were children's books about Dora. My friends names are Will, Erich, Gayl, Becky, and Janae'. They all gave at least five books and that just made me so happy to see that people want to help those schools out there. That's all folks!

March Shipment!

Just a little while ago, we sent our next shipment of books out to the Philippines! Thanks to kind donations from the El Dorado Hills Library, we quickly filled up a couple boxes. It included some easier reading books for the younger students who are still learning to read.

I would like to say thank you to Rae from the library, who has been amazing and told everyone about this project. Thanks to her, we now have several more people who know about it and are interested in helping out! Already, we have more donations from a preschool waiting to be shipped, and more people bringing books!

We are now also planning on sending books that aren't just for the school, but for the community around the school, since many people have some teen or adult books they would like to donate, but are worried that they wouldn't be appropriate in an elementary school. Perhaps we will be able to start a library there.

Thank you so much to everyone who's been giving me support! I hope to see this project grow with all your help!

Untitled Post :)

Well, upon returning home, and then finally returning to the library, I was able to talk to Carolyn, the children's librarian who has been collecting donations for us to send. The library has been very supportive of this project, and I'd just like to say thank you for all they've done! Thank you!

A family has offered to pay for a box to send to the school, but we have yet to collect enough books to fill it! The library has already given several books, and continues to collect donations for this project, but we still need help! Simple reading books would be greatly appreciated, as the school is in need of beginner reading material for the younger grades. We also would appreciate gift cards to bookstores or money to pay for books. See the "What Can You Do?" page for more details.

Alright. That's all I've got. :D

Alinunu Elementary

Well, I just got back from a trip to the Philippines, in which I got to visit Alinunu Elementary School.

I know I was excited to visit, and they seemed very excited to see us, too, and put on an entire program for us, with a presentation from each grade. Then they made me make

a speech (which I was not too thrilled about), and I cried. My dad made me cry. In front of a whole school. Hmph.

Afterwards, we went to see their makeshift library in the principal's office. The books are kept in the office, and the teachers say that the most popular reading time is around 1:00 pm, right after lunch. They call it the "reading rush."

We visited all of the classrooms, where we were able to see the TVs and DVD players that they were able to purchase because of the money someone donated.

The teachers asked that we send more beginner books (like BOB books, or simple Doctor Seuss books) because the younger grades are still in the early stages of learning to read.

If you would like to help, even a small donation can help. $3.50 can buy a book and cover the shipping cost for it. Please contact me if you are interested.

Thank you again for all of your support!

Book Shipment--Arrived!

These are the teachers from Alinunu Elementary school. Mrs. Pacis, the head teacher, is the woman in the front row, second from the right.

So we heard a little while ago that our big shipment of books has arrived in the Philippines! From what we hear, they were laying out all the books to try and figure out how much shelf space they will need. At the moment, the head teacher's office is the makeshift library, and they are putting together a little lean-to outside the office where the students can read.

It was interesting how the school supplies we sent were received, though. Classrooms there don't normally have stocks of extra school supplies for the students, so when they got the boxes of crayons and pencils, they were thinking of giving them out as prizes. When we told them our intent of how the supplies be used, they were a little surprised, but agreed it was a good idea.

We have another set of books that we would like to ship to the Philippines, but we don't have the funds at the moment to send them. We would appreciate any assistance you can provide to help us send this off!

End of September Update

September is drawing to a close, and we have some news to report.

Some very generous donor heard of Alinunu Elementary, and also the fact that the head teacher was saying that one thing the classrooms would really like to have were TVs, so that the school could use videos to teach the students. These donors contributed enough money so that the school was able to buy six 14-inch televisions (one for each classroom) and three DVD players. I'd just like to say thank you very, very much!

Also, the El Dorado Hills Library has donated another two boxes of books, including several nonfiction books on science, which we will be shipping off soon.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us!

Life is Better With Books

As we prepare to send our second shipment of books to the Philippines, I've started to think about what sort of effect this will have on the school in Alinunu. I know next to nothing from personal experience about the school, only what I have been told by my parents, and what I've heard from the head teacher and my aunt. The only thing I can do is imagine what life would be like without the exposure to books that I've enjoyed for so long.

For as long as I can remember, I've known how to read. I can't remember learning, I can't remember a time that I haven't been able to read. While my classmates in first grade were reading "Runny the Bunny" 6-page paper books and singing the alphabet, I was reading Mouse and the Motorcycle. I participated in reading contests in second grade, since I read all the time anyways, and I wanted those books they were giving out as prizes.

But I can clearly remember my third grade classroom, and the "reading corner." It was a little area of the room, walled off by bookshelves, with a few beanbag chairs that we could sit on. The only thing I didn't like about that corner was the tacky Spongebob Squarepants chair. Ugh. Even so, whenever I had free time, I would go over to that corner, find a book and, if I was lucky, use the beanbag chairs. The corner was an extremely popular destination, with such a variety of books, that even the professed haters of reading could find something that captured their attention.

Reading has shaped who I am today. Not being a social butterfly, I have not had the constant crowd of friends around me that many other people have managed to find. Yet I was always excited to run off to a little patch of shade with my latest library discovery and escape into a new world.

Stories always have fascinated me. Especially those set somewhere, or some time, other than my own--places with new sights, new sounds, new rules. Normal fiction was tiresome. Who wanted to read about normal life when we live in it every day? I wanted something different. Books give me escape routes, something to distract me, to make me feel better when I'm down. Even today, stress and exhaustion and any other problems will always lead me back to my bookshelf, where I'll pull down a familiar book, and, for a little while, I'm somewhere else.

It was reading all these stories that made me excited to write my first real story for a fifth grade assignment. When I showed it to my classmates, I was surprised at their reactions. "It's so sad!" they said. "How could you write that?" It was then I realized the power of words--that words can change the way people think. It was at that moment that I also realized that people have to write the stories, and I could be one of them, changing the way people thought. Pen(cil)s and paper became my best friends, always toting them along. Since then, I have created my own little worlds, weaving my own ideas into more stories I can escape into. Also, I have discovered that writing is a new way to express myself, and, many times, it is so much easier to use written words to communicate.

How many ideas have I been exposed to because I read? And how many discussions have I gotten into, debating such things as morality, environmental conservation, relativity, and countless other topics? Books have exposed me to such an incredible range of topics, ideas, and allowed me to discover how interesting these things really are.

I can't even imagine what my life would be like without books, without my inspiration source, my education, my escape. Everything I know has been changed because of them.

So, as we send these books off, all I know is that these kids have very few, but they deserve more. I want these books to help change their world the way mine has been changed. I want them to see the world in a new light, to discover all these ideas, these opportunities that are open to them. I want the world to be open to them.

You know what? There's one other way of putting what I want for them. I want them to learn what I have over so many years.

Life is better with books.