Students at Newton-Lee Elementary in Loudoun County, Va., worked together on a year-end project to send books to Kenya.

Books were donated from a book drive, brought in from home and collected from a few teachers’ personal classroom libraries.

Newton-Lee’s Community Club members and second-grade teacher Jensy Richards’ class got together to pack and send 50 pounds of gently used books to Kenya’s Camel Book Drive.

Richards’ class, which worked on several other projects locally during the 2007-2008 school year, decided to go abroad for their last project. The second-graders asked Newton-Lee’s Community Club (made up of fourth and fifth grade students) to help out.

Funding, in the form of a grant of $500 from Friends of Kenya, helped to pay for postage to mail the books and to buy new books from the Camel Book Drive’s wish list at Amazon.com. With funds remaining, another book drive is planned for this coming year.

The Newton-Lee students got together one afternoon to write letters to the students in Kenya who will receive the books. They packed and weighed the boxes and had a brief slide show on Kenya to better understand where the books were being sent.

Guidance counselor Katie Swartzendruber, the sponsor of the Community Club, and Richards, who served in the Peace Corps in Kenya, look forward to working together with their students in the coming school year to help meet needs in their own community and abroad.


(Note: Jensy Richards is president of Friends of Kenya.)