In January of 2006 a passionate young woman named Sonia Sosa approached me with the desire to have a book drive at the National convention of the American Medical Student Association to benefit Books for Africa . Her desire to save precious medical books from landfills and get them in the hands of African students triggered the partnership AMSA and Better World Books has started today. Through her promotion and hard work of the book drive she was able to collect over 500 books, enough to stock two school libraries in Africa .
Thankfully that was not the last I heard from AMSA members. Soon inquiries started to come in from other AMSA members that were inspired by Sonia’s efforts. Book drives were lead by three other AMSA groups at schools in the Chicago-land area. In total they collected 2200 more books! This is enough to fund the shipment of over 9,000 books to Africa which can supply five entire schools.
Our efforts did not stop there. Now AMSA and Better World Books are teaming up to bring this program to all AMSA members. Besides the obvious benefit of helping to end the book famine in Africa , your chapter will financially benefit by receiving 50 cents per “qualified book.” Modeled after Goodwill Industries, each book you send us will be either sold online with 100% of the profits going to Books for Africa or will be sent directly to BFA. An additional $.10 per book will be set aside for AMSA scholarships. The scholarship amounts will be determined at the end of the year, and will be based on number of books collected per school as well as per capita books collected/school size ratios. Plus, Global Health Action Committee will receive an additional $.05 for every book collected! And, as you know, Global Health Action Committee aims to uproot poverty; since economic disparities lay at the root of health problems the world over.”
We hope that each and every AMSA group decides to participate in this rewarding service project to help save precious books from landfills and help spread global literacy.
