(Packing – while also reading. Pic cred: the author)

Packing up the book haul from RTR’s Book Drive

During today’s Room To Read session, we were very hands-on with our work – as the Book Drive had been successful! I was rather surprised at the sheer number of books that we were able to collect since our service group had announced the Book Drive.

There were many stacks of books for us to unpack, sort, and repack; so the members got started right away. The categories for organizing the books were: Primary, Secondary, and Adult.

Books of the same categories were stacked in 3 different places. I believe that whilst some books were rather easy to sort, novels that were a bit on the longer side were much more difficult, therefore, they had to be briefly rechecked when packing back into the boxes.

Afterward, we worked together in order to repack the books into boxes to be transported to the school. The only obstacle that we came across was resisting the urge to sit down and read some of the books we were packing!

After packing and labeling the boxes, it was extremely satisfying to stand back and look at how much work we’d done, I was quite delighted at how many books were donated. These books will then be given away to Bapajaya Vidyaloka Maha Vidyalaya School, and take place in their library – that our service group is helping to build!

(Stacks of books galore! Pic cred: the author)

Learning outcomes:

• LO4 – Working collaboratively with others
  • Today’s service session focused a lot on hands-on teamwork, as the materials we were working with were rather heavy we had to have all hands on deck and work together.
  • I believe that our service group’s teamwork was exceptional and we got through all the sorting and packing highly efficiently with collaboration.

• LO6 – Global engagement 
  • Although the entire point of service is to engage in a global issue, I think that today’s session in particular emphasized interacting with the global issue of lack of resources and literary education.
  • I was able to deliberate various aspects of this global issue while conducting this activity during service.