Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia (JCCNV)

Volunteers bring together
parents, children, and teachers to run a bookdrive!

School Director, Fran Pfeffer (left) joins parent volunteers,
Laura Herz  (far left) and Julie Strasberg (in pink, below),
to organize a bookdrive at the preschool of the
Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia (JCCNV).
The 200 books collected so far (shown in the last frame) will be sent to the flagship school in Yokneam to be distributed amongst school libraries there.


Laura Herz , who initiated the JCCNV drive,
with school director, Fran Pfeffer


Laura Herz first found out about B4I  from a poster at her husband’s synagogue
notifying that the Hebrew school was running a book drive there.
She thought the grassroots aspect of the Books for Israel Project was a great idea because it enables a direct connection between the donor communities and the recipients of those donations.

Laura proposed running a drive to the Committee Chairperson for Tzedakah projects at her children's community preschool and got her approval. She then spoke to Fran Pfeffer, the Preschool Director.
Ms. Pfeffer helped to get the message out to the parents and
helped set the date for the drive. She also investigated sources
for additional funds just in case donations would not cover the cost
of mailing the books, although in the end this was not a problem.

Julie Strasberg joined Laura to help run the drive and the two of them began sending out letters to parents asking for help. They put up posters reminding everyone about the drive the following week and then began their collection in conjunction with activities related to the Week of the Child. They set up a big box and an envelope at the school,
asking people to make their donations within a ten-day timeframe.
They took up Roz Cantor’s idea (read about her Florida drive) 
regarding the “Books and a Buck” campaign to make sure that they
would have most of the funds to mail out the books.
Many parents responded and the collection box was soon full.
Laura and Julie then began the long task of reviewing the books, screening out those unsuitable, labeling them, and packing them
for shipping. After the screening process, the chosen lot of
suitable books numbered 200 and were packed up in 4 boxes (2 M-bags).

The entire process took some 8 weeks from start to finish.
Laura’s only complaint was that the drive was scheduled too late
in the year to pull in more books!
She plans to start the drive earlier in the school year next time around.

Great going, Laura! We hope to hear more about you and your drive in the future!