Rain City Rotary helps send books to Southern Africa

Rain City Rotary volunteers helped pack 20,000 books

On April 2, 2011, members of Rain City Rotary, Shoreline, joined other local Rotarians at the Northwest Harvest Warehouse in Kent to pack used books for shipment to southern Africa as part of Rotary’s Books for the World project. Participating Rotary Clubs from the USA and southern Africa have provided over 6 million books and other educational materials to impoverished schools in this region since 2001.

Teachers and staff of Briarcrest, Brookside, Lake Forest Park, Meridian Park, and Parkwood elementary schools along with Shorewood and Shorecrest high schools donated approximately 100 boxes of used textbooks, children’s books and other educational materials. Sue Porter and Cathy Allred of the Shoreline School District coordinated these donations. Rain City Rotarians collected these books and transported them to the Northwest Harvest Warehouse for packing and shipping.

Pallets of books for southern Africa

Rain City Rotarians joined 100 other Rotarians from 25 local Rotary clubs on April 2 for Rotarian at Work Day. From 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, Rotarians sorted and packed 728 boxes containing over 20,000 books - textbooks, children’s books, adult fiction and non-fiction, reference books and encyclopedias. These books will go to schools, libraries, doctor’s offices and community centers across southern African.

Rain City Rotary meets most Thursday evenings at 6:15 pm at Shoreline Community College in the PUB’s Quiet Dining Room.

--Kim Lancaster