On Thursday, January 26th, members from Oakland Gardens Branch went to a house to pick up books. The house belonged to an elderly lady, with walking aids. Her daughter had gone to the CVS pharmacy in which we had placed our donation bin at. Her daughter, Liz, told us as she was exiting the store, she felt compelled to turn back and give to her community. So she asked store manager, Amy Algo, if she could contact us, as her mother had a lot of unused books in her house, and wouldn’t be able to transport all of them to the pharmacy.
Amy then contacted us, and introduced Liz to us. She asked if our members could go to Liz’s house to pick up the books, and we agreed. Amy then gave our parent advisor’s phone number to Liz, through which she spoke with us. We went to Liz’s house, and we saw her and her mom as they greeted us at the door. We gave Liz a bouquet of balloon flowers as a thank you. We brought in bags and started filling them up with books. We noticed that all of the books were hardcover history books. We asked Liz about this, and told us that the man who used to live there loved history books.
She told us that the man, who is now 77 years old, had fallen down the stairs and gotten injured. He is currently in rehab, learning to physically move better again. She said that he would like to keep some books, and so we left a few books for him. We took longer than expected ( an hour) packing the book.. All the books barely fit in the car, as there were 21 bags full! When we were leaving, her mom offered us some chocolate, but we politely declined. Liz, wanting to help more, even offered to give us the bookshelf! This just shows how far some people will go to help their community.
Thank you to all the people who are helping and supporting us in reaching our goal of building a library in Africa.
Our Volunteers:
Matthew Lin: 1 hour
Stephanie ShiRan You: 1 hour
Sophia ShiHan You: 1 hour
Hong Hao (Alfred) Liu: 1 hour
Report by Sophia ShiHan You
Reviewed by Jia Qi Liu (Angela)
