MU's Invisible Children pairs with Ugandan school
The book drive has collected thousands of books.
Published Jan. 11, 2010
MU’s chapter of Invisible Children will end its book drive Jan. 29. The drive has been ongoing throughout fall semester last year.
Caitlin Lawler, the book drive committee's co-chairwoman, said Invisible Children started the drive by e-mailing and calling different departments asking if it could put up donation boxes in their lobbies.
“We also contacted local people, businesses, bookstores, churches and anyone else we could think of to help out," she said.
Lawler said Invisible Children placed boxes in the School of Health Professions, the College of Education and the School of Journalism.
The organization has collected thousands of books, Lawler said. Next, it will log into the Better Worlds Books Web site and enter the book’s ISBN numbers into the database.
“Better World Books is a company that sells textbooks and other popular children's books and gives a portion of the proceeds to selected charities,” Lawler said.
Lawler said participating schools in the U.S. are broken up into different clusters. The winners of different categories in each cluster will get to send someone to Africa to see firsthand where the money goes.
MU is in a cluster with other Midwest schools, Invisible Children Co-President Annie Bastida said. Other schools in the cluster include the University of St. Thomas, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Catholic Memorial High School.
Bastida said the organization had a majority of its books shipped out before leaving for winter break.
“Coming back over break, my boyfriend, Brett Smith, Kelsey and Caitlin and I will be back on Friday to get the books from the Textbook Game downtown, which has helped us tremendously this year, and to enter them in and ship them off before the 19th,” Bastida said.
Bastida said any books that don’t qualify will either be sold at a sidewalk sale in the spring semester or donated.
Each school is paired with a partner school in Africa, Lawler said. MU is paired with Gulu Secondary School in Uganda.
Bastida said they haven’t had any direct contact with Gulu Secondary School but a high school teacher of hers does participate in a teacher exchange program with Invisible Children and has been to Gulu Secondary School many times.
“He came to talk and showed us pictures of the kids we're raising money for, and it was really neat to hear stories and see the faces of the people we're helping,” Bastida said.
MU’s Invisible Children chapter held a smaller book drive last spring, Bastida said.
“I'm really just very happy with how much Invisible Children has grown this year and all we've accomplished so far,” Bastida said. “The most important thing will be the projects our time and money goes for the kids at Gulu Secondary School.”