Thank you, Volunteers and Donors! 1st Campus Book Drive is a Wild Success!

I couldn't be more thrilled with the success of our first-ever campuswide "Love-Talk-Read" Children's Book Drive at Sacramento State University.  Wonderful students, faculty, and staff donated 1,500 books during our week-long book drive which took place April 12 - 18th. Meeting and connecting with people from different majors who support early literacy was such a motivating experience.  I am so deeply appreciative of the donors and all of the volunteers who worked so hard on the effort.

NSSLHA Volunteers

(left to right) Langathani Siziba, Lusine Muradyan, Nora Shimoda, and Ryan Aspiras

I want to send a special thanks to Saugher Nojan, the Honors Program's Community Service Coordinator, for recruiting student organizations such as Rotaract and the Pharmacy Club to participate.  The Pharmacy Club kindly loaned us their shade structure which provided cool relief from the afternoon heat.  Students from the Honors Program staffed our table all day Tuesday and Rotaract club members did the same on Wednesday.  NSSLHA, National Student Speech-Language Hearing Association, volunteers were present on Monday, Thursday, and Friday.  Thanks to all of these dedicated students who generously gave of their time, we were able to cover the all 40 shifts.  That is an impressive feat!

Rotaract Volunteers

Rotaract club members collected books on Wednesday.  Pictured here are Daniel Orozco and Maria Ramos. 

 Thanks to the volunteers who passed out about 1,000 flyers to people on campus, so many people came forward to offer boxes of books to us.  I personally drove to some of their homes to pick up piles of gently-used books that will be delivered to hundreds of children who do not own any books.  Many of these books will be given to children at the Shriner's Hospital (for burn victims), Reading Partners, a non-profit reading tutoring program in public schools, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's "Sacramento Reads!" initiative dedicated to helping students read at grade level by third grade.

Generous Donors

Betty Christoff (left) learned about our project from a flyer given to her by a volunteer during the campus book drive. 

I went to her house to pick up many beautiful books.  Thank you, Betty!

My deepest appreciation and thanks go to the following volunteers:

	NSSLHA
Nora Shimoda	Jovany Estrada	Rita Garcia
Lusine Muradyan	Dorothy Rich	Melissa Galante
Sharon Sundman Schultz	Corey Wilson	Langathani Siziba
Carrie Harrell	Becky Boroica	Roxanne Cazarez
Courtney Fortenbery	Tyler Temmerman	Gina Fuentes
Sierra Milani	Amber Rickli	Sarah Dalimonte
Montse Hinojosa	Rukumini Madihalli	Donna Lee
Stephanie Summers	Jennifer Ochoa	Lauren Salmon
Sarah Wessel	Kitty Czarnecki

 

	Honors Program
Saugher  Nojan	Emilie	Cheyanne
Joshua	Nathan	Zack
Michell	Jazmin	Catanio
Alex	Nick	Ravi
Cindy

 

	Rotaract
Maria Ramos	Daniel Orozco	Denise Barajas
Aly Soto	Morgan Spires	Elizabeth Holguin

Our Book Collection Total now exceeds 29,000!  Thanks to all of the generous volunteers and donors, it has exceeded my wildest dreams. THANK YOU!

**Reminder:  We accept gently-used children's books (age range infant to 18 years old) all year in the lobby of Shasta Hall on the campus of Sac State.  Book donation boxes are located just inside the doors to the Speech Pathology and Audiology department.