During 10th and finals week, Net Impact Undergrad at UCLA, an organization focused on socially conscious business, is collecting books to promote literacy around the world.
The drive, which runs through Dec. 12, is a partnership with Better World Books, an online bookseller that will sell donations with a percentage of profits going to organizations working to improve literacy in third-world countries.
Organizers of the committee said the end of the quarter is an ideal time to elicit book donations.
“It occurs during the most high traffic time of returning books,” said Janet Liang, president of external relations for Net Impact Undergrad at UCLA.
Liang said that any books that have lost all market value will be recycled.
“We’re trying to make this campuswide,” Liang said. Book donation sites will be at Powell library, throughout Humanities and Bunche, and at some sororities.
Launched last year, this is the first event for the UCLA chapter of Net Impact Undergrad. Net Impact is an umbrella program of which many business schools have formed chapters. Undergraduate programs were launched mid-2008.
Liang said the group chose to team up with Better World Books because it is a perfect example of a company with a social mission.
“We’re a company that’s using commerce to do good for the world,” said Yanna Ogilvie, senior account representative for Better World Books.
Better World Books has been in business for six years. She said college campus book drives are a common source of book donations and 7.5 percent of net sales from campus drives go to non-profit literacy organizations.
Net Impact has chosen Worldfund, an organization that provides education for underprivileged children in Latin America in efforts to reduce poverty, to be the recipient of the funds generated from this quarter’s book drive.
Better World Books is also partnered with Books for Africa, National Center for Family Literacy and Room to Read. Liang said Net Impact Undergrad will choose a different specific fund for the drive to benefit each quarter.
“It’s using products that people want and need to bring in commerce to do something responsible socially and environmentally,” Ogilvie said.
ASUCLA will also play a large role. Donation bins will accompany ASUCLA’s popular book buy-back stations. Liang said these will be the most prominent donation sites. She said statistically the buy-back program does not accept 30 percent of books and that they hope a convenient donation option will be a successful source of books.
“We’re hoping to make this a tradition,” Liang said. The group has plans to repeat the book drive winter and spring quarter.
The book drive will accept all books except course readers.
“Literacy is a global equalizer,” said Liang. She said Net Impact Undergrad focuses on international development and literacy is an important tool in accomplishing this end.
The project is also thematic for the end of a quarter, Liang said.
“As busy students, we easily get stressed out about the impending work ahead of us during exams, but I think it’s encouraging to realize that these same opportunities for the higher education we’re receiving here aren’t as readily available or even accessible in developing regions around the world,” Liang said in a press release on Monday.