New Orleans hurricane victims will benefit from the book donations of generous Guilderland residents.
Mildred Elley, a series of schools that award a variety of vocational degrees, organized a book drive as part of an initiative to help needy families in the United States, along with the Better World Books organization and the National Center for Family Literacy.
President and CEO of Empire Education Corporation and Mildred Elley schools Faith Takes said she plans to continue the practice of donating books each school year.
Takes, who has lived in Guilderland her whole life, said reading was something important to her as a child and as a mother, and she wanted to pass that on to others as best she could.
Instead of trashing [old books] and throwing them away, we ought to share them with places that don’t have books, she said.
The school collected used college textbooks from July to August and collected more than 300 books donated by students. The books will be given to those who need them or sold to generate funding for the NCFL program, according to information provided by Mildred Elley.
Other organizations also contributed to the drive, Takes said, and the books are going primarily to New Orleans.
Takes said the school has generated a large number of outdated books due to publishers constantly coming out with new editions, and those older books are still useful.
`Students don’t want last year’s editions,` she said.
Students will have the opportunity to donate any books they cannot sell back to the bookstore or use again.
Mildred Elley is in the process of moving its campus from the Latham Circle Mall to 527 Central Ave. in Albany, and during the transition, officials uncovered many unused books, Takes said.
Takes said the school might continue to participate in the NCFL program, but is also eyeing two other options. One is the Martin Luther King Junior book drive, run by the Office of General Services and the other by the Board of Regents. Both are focused on downtown Albany.
`The grim reality is that 42 million American adults are illiterate and over 50 million American adults cannot read past a fourth-grade level,` said Takes.
`As an institution that is dedicated to developing the career skills of our students, we understand the need for a literate society and are proud to have had the opportunity to work side-by-side with Better World Books to help promote literacy within the United States.`
Better World Books has collected more than 11.4 million books at 1,600 colleges and universities and 900 libraries, according to its Web site. It has raised more than $2.8 million for more than 80 literacy and educational organizations, such as Books for Africa, Room to Read, Worldfund, the Robinson Community Learning Center, the New Orleans Public Library Foundation and the NCFL.
NCFL has worked with more than 1 million families and has trained more than 150,000 teachers and volunteers, according to its Web site.
Emily Kirkpatrick, vice president of NCFL, said the program is part of a long-term recovery project for disaster relief.
` It is important to literacy to have families and citizens involved at all levels,` she added.“