How to Help – First Steps (updated
August, 2004)
Thank you so very much for your response to the
Books for Israel Project, and for your willingness to help. We are very
grateful for your interest. As of August 2004, a bit less than two years
after it was started, the Books for Israel Project (“B4i”) is working as a
wholly volunteer, grassroots effort that has helped bring English language
books to well over 150 school libraries, classrooms and learning centers
in Israel.
Since 2000, Israel has suffered the equivalent of
numerous 9/11s. In these extremely difficult times, funds that the
Israeli government would normally allocate for education and educational
materials is being diverted to defense against terror. The Israeli
economy has been badly hurt by the many damaging attacks the little
country has suffered, by the general economic downturn, and by the decline
in tourism to Israel.
The degree to which we can help Israel’s future
generations not to have to pay another of terrorism’ horrible prices –
ignorance and poor educational opportunities -- is entirely dependent on
the help and support of people like you throughout the U.S. and the
English speaking world. After you have reviewed this document, please
don’t hesitate to contact us with any and all questions you may have. We
look forward to working with you, and we know that Israel needs you. If
you decide not to work with Books for Israel, we hope that you will take
an active role in generously supporting Israel in its struggle against
terror in some other way. Israel is a very small country. The Israeli
people are very determined, but they cannot stand against this onslaught
alone.
Starting a Book drive
I
If you would be
able to conduct book donation drives once or twice per year until Israel
gets past this crisis, that would be a tremendous help. We wish that the
entire security and economic crisis in Israel were resolved yesterday, but
even if that wish came true, at this point the damage that has been done
to the Israeli school system by the budget cutbacks necessitated to defend
against terrorism has been enormous. We anticipate schools signing up for
help starting in the fall of 2004 that will have few if any English
language library books whatsoever. We hope you will help now, and we hope
that you will agree to help again in the future. While we don’t want
anyone “burning out” as a result of this effort, we also don’t want to
give people the false idea that sending a few books, or even a lot of
books, will solve the problem. Unfortunately, it won’t. However, with
your help, and the help of others who care enough to help keep Israel’s
students learning—we should be able to at least “put a bandage” on the
situation until some normalcy is restored.
There is no time
limit to when a book drive can start, end or ship out books. The schools
need books today, and they will need them tomorrow and three months from
now as well. Please time the start and finish of your book drives based
on your convenience and the appropriateness of the activity to your
synagogue, church, community center or school.
Making Individual
Book Donations
Not
everyone is always able to start book drives. If you can’t, but you’d
like to help by donating books from your own collection, or by getting
together with just a few friends or family members to ship books, your
assistance is most welcome. In addition to the scores of synagogues,
churches, schools and community centers that have run book drives for this
Project over the past year and a half from throughout the U.S., there are
scores of generous individuals who have shipped much-valued and much-loved
books directly to our schools on their own from the U.S., Canada, and
England. So even if you cannot manage a full-scale book drive, please
read on!
What kinds of Books
are Needed?
The
books that families and individuals can donate may range anywhere from
preschool materials through literature appropriate to high school reading
levels.
IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT:
QUALITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUANTITY.
In running your book drives or selecting books from your own
collection, please keep this important message in mind, and please
communicate to the people who will selecting donated books to send:
Israeli students need good
quality books in order to be able to learn.
It will NOT
help to send them the trash from the bottom of someone’s closet.
A
collection of old, unwanted pulp romances, twenty-year-old encyclopedias,
or Stephen King novels involving rape, incest and murder will do nothing
to improve the English language skills or, for that matter, the morale of
Israel’s student population, which is already having to struggle with
realities that no sane human being ever wishes their children to have to
face.
On the other hand, a decent set of
basic favorites and much-needed reference books can form the backbone of a
small but viable school or classroom library. Attractive beginning reader
basic books to teach the A-B-Cs and basic phonetics and word/object
associations, some Dr. Seuss, Berenstain Bears, Boxcar children books,
Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, Roald Dahl books, early reader “chapter
books,” the Harry Potter series, The Secret Garden, A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn, some John Steinbeck, some good short story collections, a
few good classics, a couple of decent dictionaries and a few good,
attractive science books for young readers can be a real help.
Please ask people
to use their good judgment – the guidelines are actually pretty simple:
If they would be glad if their own children or
grandchildren were given the book
that they’re thinking of donating, that means it is a great book to
donate.
If they wouldn't want their children or grandchildren reading the book,
they shouldn’t include it.
A few of our
schools have received the Harry Potter series, and we note that this is a
really great one to send, as even kids who have a lot of problems reading
in English will try for Harry! The R.L. Stine books and the Sweet Valley
High series are also big hits in the more secular schools, though some of
the more religious Jewish schools might prefer not to receive them. The
best way to find out about the best books to send for the particular
school cluster you choose to work directly with is to talk directly with
the lead volunteer teacher for that particular school cluster (see
how the project is organized, below).
Also very much needed,
as Israeli students must prepare reports as part of their matriculation
requirements are (fairly up-to-date!) encyclopedias, science books, books
on anthropology, history, etc. Both literature and nonfiction, hopefully
on levels not far exceeding high school English, are needed, wanted, and
will be of tremendous help.
Special
mention should be given to books on tape and large print books,
both fiction and nonfiction. These are absolutely excellent to assist
Israel’s blinded and/or challenged population (and sadly, this includes
not only children with learning disabilities, but also those who have been
wounded by terrorist attacks and had their sight taken in whole or in
part). Any and all of our schools would greatly appreciate receiving
these.
Once again, the basic guidelines are fairly simple – any book that
American kids like, Israeli kids will like, with the exception of books
about baseball and skiing. Please don’t send these, or old travel
books about Israel, which for some reason we note people sometimes try to
donate – old travel catalogs about Israel should go to recycling, not to
Israeli kids who live there. (An important aside: Please – anyone who has
old travel catalogs for Israel should get themselves on a plane to visit
Israel, then bring back some new travel catalogs and send them to
their friends in the U.S. and Europe and Canada with a note, “I just came
back from a trip to Israel. I hope you visit there SOON!” The Israeli
economy suffers very badly whenever the tourist trade was frightened off
by the terrorist campaign. Every time someone decides not to visit Israel
because they are afraid, it gives terrorism a win, and our people a huge
loss. One of the best ways that anyone can let our people in Israel know
that they are not alone is, quite literally, not to leave them alone. And
yes, one of the absolutely best ways you can bring books to our schools in
Israel is in your suitcase!! We’ve had several synagogues, church and
school missions and individual book donors do this and the effect on
morale in the schools is absolutely excellent!)
Screening the Books
It is very much requested that volunteers (in a
community center or synagogue, these can be older students and/or parents)
screen the books before they are shipped out to assure appropriateness
of the material and that the books are in good condition.
Sadly, one person who attempted to do something along the lines of
this project on a smaller scale on their own, but without specifying any
guidelines for the books that would be donated, found herself receiving
torn, scribbled-on materials stuck together with toddler food, old copies
of Portnoy's Complaint, and so on.
So, to repeat this important point, in starting a book drive it is
important to clearly explain the kinds of materials that can be used, and
to screen what is sent so that what arrives in Israel is ready to go to
the students who need help.
Preparing Books for Shipment
Each book shipped to our schools should bear a stamp or sticker indicating
that the book is donated. A
sample stamp is below – you are welcome to modify it for local use by
changing the name of the donor institution to your own. Some of our book
drives (especially in schools) like to add a blank line for the individual
book donor to write in their own name, some drives have found it too
difficult and just use a general sticker that identifies the book as
coming from their synagogue, church, community center or school.
If you are
considering starting a book drive or donating books and have any problems
putting together your stamp/sticker, please let us know – it is a very
quick operation for us to do one for you. Stickers can be inexpensively
produced by simply running them off on a copy machine and using glue to
neatly affix them, printed up on a laser printer using pre-cut stickers
that can be bought thru office supply stores. If you would like, you can
make an actual stamp or sticker, especially if you have local area vendors
who will donate the production to you as a donation or at cost.
The stamps or
stickers are used to personalize the donation, making it more meaningful
both to the person who sends materials and to the students who receive
them. The stickers help the books we send to become a concrete expression
that someone cares and is also interested in learning. In addition, it
denotes that the books are a donation and not a commercial sale item.
This is very, very important, as we do not want any issues to arise
regarding taxation of book shipments. The Israeli teacher who are helping
with this project are mostly from the field of education. Due to the
security situation and the economic squeeze it has imposed, many of them
worked without pay for several months during the 2001-2002 school year,
did so again at the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year, and again
during the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year. In addition, for 2004
some 6,000 teachers were laid off, and those who remained took a 20% pay
cut in their already meager salaries. As far as the 2004-2005 school year
is concerned, we will know more soon, but our understanding is that yet
more layoffs may well occur, and we will not be surprised if there are yet
more pay cuts as well. These people are simply not able to sustain the
taxes or fines that can be imposed by the Israeli customs and taxation
authorities on book shipments if it is not made crystal clear that what is
being shipped is donated, used books.
Shipping Books to Israel:
1) The most
cost-effective way to ship books is via "M bags" (3rd class
postal sacks), for which the U.S. Post Office charges about US$10
for eleven pounds, and US$.99 for each pound thereafter to ship books via
book economy M bag rates. The Canadian Post Office charges $9.50 for the
first kilo and $4.60 for each additional kilo thereafter (rates in
Canadian dollars).
2) Please DON’T
use Fed Ex or UPS - There are faster and more expensive ways to ship
books internationally in small quantities than sending them via M bags,
but we ask that you NOT use them (even if you can afford to!) Shipping
via UPS or Fed Ex can create the mistaken impression that you are sending
over taxable items, and once again, please bear in mind that our teachers
in Israel are struggling with poverty themselves and simply cannot afford
to pay for the books we send.
3) Please
DON’T expect teachers to travel long distances to pick up packages of
books that are sent into the country through visitors, missions, etc. It
is WONDERFUL if people can come to visit the schools. There is nothing
better. However, please understand that most of the teachers in Israel
are at this point really struggling to get by. They do not drive large
cars. They cannot afford the (very expensive!) gas prices. They cannot
travel to pick up books if it involves going outside their “home base” so
please, don’t ask them to.
3) To pack up
books for M bag shipments
–
PLEASE CONTACT YOUR POST OFFICE WHEN YOU START THE PACKING PROCESS
AND EXPLAIN WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO AND WHAT YOU WILL NEED.
YOU WILL NEED YOUR LOCAL POST OFFICE TO BE COMPLETELY FAMILIAR
WITH M-Bag SHIPPING AND THE BULK BOOK ECONOMY SHIPMENT RATES,
AND YOU WILL NEED TO GIVE THEM AN ESTIMATE OF HOW MANY M-BAGS
YOU’LL NEED AT A TIME IN ORDER TO SHIP YOUR DONATIONS.
Our experience indicates that even fairly busy post offices won’t tend to
have more than 8-12 M-bags available on any one given day, and some
smaller post offices will have fewer. In some cases, the post office will
inform you that you must pick up the M bags first and prepare them for
shipment, bringing them back full and ready to go. In other areas, the
post office may let you bring in your books and place them in M bags at
the post office (which saves you a trip back and forth to bring the bags
to your book collection site). So advance notice to the post office is
important. Please also keep in mind that if you don’t give any advance
warning to your post office, you may find yourself showing up with more
boxes than the post office has M-bags to ship them in, or facing a postal
worker who really hasn’t got a clue how to send shipments of this type and
therefore slows the whole process down and makes it much more “painful”
than it needs to be.
a.
pack your books up in strong BOXES, not bigger than 9” x 18” x 12”
(the size of boxes in which bulk paper is packed at 10
reams to a box).
SMALLER BOXES ARE FINE. Don’t forget, in the end
someone – and it may well be you! –
ends up lifting those boxes, filled with books. The
idea here is NOT to get anyone hurt, so please plan
accordingly. If you know that you are going to be
working with a lot of very young or volunteers,
or with seniors, PLEASE use smaller boxes.
b. It is
best, if you can manage, to put a garbage bag or other plastic bag inside
each box,
pack the books into the bag, and seal it up before
sealing up the box, as if the boxes get opened
due to rough handling en route this will help ensure
that your precious cargo still arrives safely at its
destination (like just about everything else in this
write-up, we’ve learned this step through experience!)
c. please
put a paper with your sender address as well as the recipient address in
Israel
(see point e below) and the line
CONTAINS USED DONATED BOOKS OF NO ($0) COMMERCIAL
VALUE
inside each box of books before you seal it up for
shipment.
You will also need to address the OUTSIDE of each box,
and add the line
CONTAINS USED DONATED BOOKS OF NO ($0) COMMERCIAL
VALUE
on the OUTSIDE of each box.
d. boxes should
be addressed to the SCHOOL, contact information for which you will be sent
once you confirm that you are either starting a book
drive or preparing a shipment for individual donation
on your own.
The name of the school should be followed by
"Attention: (whomever your individual contact is),
the street address of the school, town and zip code,
ISRAEL.
Example –
Aleph Bet Elementary School
Att: Kochava HaMorah
12345 Sderot Rothschild
Petach Tikva 90624
Israel
e.
When you ship via M bag, you should be given an M Bag TAG and a CUSTOMS
FORM
for each M-bag. Please fill these out
completely with your sender and recipient name
and full address (see point d above re how to
write in the Israeli address).
Please also specify that the books are a GIFT on
the customs form and write
DONATED BOOKS OF NO ($0) COMMERCIAL VALUE
on the tag as well.
By the way, we
have had three instances so far of a postal worker who was
trying to instruct one of our book drive leaders
that these customs forms are not needed.
Please DON’T accept any such instructions! Some
postal workers may not be completely
familiar with the specifications for these kinds
of shipments, but omitting this kind of detail
can result in trouble on the other end when your
books arrive in
Israel.
Post offices can supply you with these forms in
advance, which certainly saves a lot of desperate scribbling
while you’re standing in line at the post office
and is DEFINITELY recommended when sending out
shipments of 8 boxes or more. There’s a lot of
paperwork involved in these shipments, and it is better
to do it up in advance and perhaps tape the two
forms needed to ship each box or group of boxes to their
appropriate box(es) before you bring your
shipment in rather than trying to get everything done in a rush
at the post office.
f.
Last but not least – if at all possible
please don’t ship your books
in lots of more than ten M bags per shipment.
There are two
reasons for this request: (a) really large shipments tend to make the customs authorities
at the Israeli
ports nervous – we have had one instance where 50 bagsarrived in the Haifa port
all at once.
It
took quite a bit of work with the authorities to convince them that this generous gift REALLY wasn’t
for commercial
purposes, though our organizers in Israel did finally (thank heavens!) manage to get the
message across!
(b) In some cases, the books need to be picked up by volunteer teachers at the schools
from their
local post offices when they arrive. As noted earlier - gasoline in Israel is extremely expensive,
and
our teachers in Israel are living on a pittance, unless they have an additional source of income.
As a
result, almost no one in Israel has a minivan or SUV and more than ten bags just cannot fit into
the small
cars our teachers drive! Therefore, if you can, please send your shipments in lots of 10 bags
or less, with a week spaced in between. That way, they will tend not to interest the customs authorities
unnecessarily, and it will be much easier for our volunteer teachers to manage the pickups!
What about money for the supplies
and for shipping the books??
Sometimes people have a difficult time understanding
what kind of entity the Books for Israel Project is, as we’re a bit
unusual. “B4i” is 100% volunteer, and 100% grassroots. There is no paid
staff. We have no offices. We have no bank account. We have no tax
identification number, and we have no tax status. We do not make a profit
of any kind, yet we are not a registered nonprofit organization. In the
U.S., that would involve lots of registration work and reporting, which –
being 100% volunteer and grassroots – we don’t have the time or the money
to deal with. In Israel, it would mean we’d have to have an office, which
– again, being 100% volunteer on all sides of the effort –we definitely
don’t have the time or the money to manage!
When looking at
launching a book drive, however, it is important to decide how you want to
try to work the financing of the effort. Even if you plan to be an
“angel” and pay for the entire cost of shipping the books on your own, you
yourself may want to be able to take a tax write-off. Certainly, if your
plan is to involve other “angels” in the effort as well to help cover the
bulk of the shipping costs, you’ll probably need to assure they can take a
tax write-off. The best way to do this is to secure the cooperation and
help of a local synagogue, church or school that is a registered
nonprofit. If one of these institutions will sponsor your drive by
extending their tax shelter identification to cover shipping money
donations, you it can work very smoothly on all sides.
To “do it right,”
we strongly recommend that:
a.
You get
the agreement of the synagogue, church or school in advance of
starting to publicize your drive. Work out the details on how best
to handle the collection and recording of funds with the institution’s
treasurer or accounting office to assure that there is a minimum of
friction and that all sides will be happy with the arrangements – your
shipping money donors, and the institution. This should include working
through who will take care of any routine letters that the institution may
need to send out as a proof of receipt of the donation – your help may be
needed in putting these together, depending on the size of the
institution’s accounting staff.
b.
Keep in
mind that you will want to be able to have an accurate running record of
the shipping money
collected/earmarked for your book drive – the
institution’s staff may or may not want to be involved in
having to keep this, and you can work out details
accordingly. For instance, one synagogue that has
helped Books for
Israel run drives
several times has a volunteer treasurer and accountant.
To help minimize the work involved for the
institution, a post box has been set up to receive donations
for the book drive. Checks are made out in the
name of the synagogue. The book drive leader keeps
a running list of all checks that come in by way
of the post box and all checks given directly to the book
drive leader, so that the book drive leader always
knows how much shipping money is available.
The checks are turned over to the synagogue’s volunteer
treasurer, and the book drive leader helps
produce the letters of thanks that are sent to the
shipping money donors on the synagogue’s letterhead.
This way, the volunteer treasurer isn’t overloaded, the
book drive leader stays on top of the situation,
and the “angels” of the book drive get the thanks they
well deserve for helping to ship out the books.
c.
Make
sure that you and the institution are on the same page about the minimum
monetary donation
for which the institution will be willing to
extend its tax i.d. and/or provide letters of receipt.
Most tax deductible institutions and
organizations, for instance, will not do this for donations of under
$25.00. They are not required to by law, and
getting involved in doing this kind of work for donations
under $25.00 can become a real burden, depending
on the size of your book drive. You need to know
about these kinds of limitations before you begin
accepting donations, and you need to be able to
articulate them clearly so that no
misunderstandings accrue (nothing raises tempers faster than
misunderstandings about money!)
You can
ALSO raise money via the grassroots approach. Having an institution
working with you to offer a tax deduction to people who provide larger
amounts of money to send books shouldn’t mean that people who donate books
can’t help with smaller amounts. We recommend that in explaining a book
drive for neighbors, students and their parents, it would mean that if
families or individuals who are able to donated a dollar or two along with
their books, the money to ship them to
Israel would be
raised at the same time. One of the most creative ways to get this across
was developed by friends and book drive leaders in Ohio, who came up with
the slogan “A book and a buck.” Stressing that it costs money to ship the
books, and asking people who can to help with shipping costs, also helps
remind people that what is needed is quality material, not
quantities of junk. If people are being asked to help with money to ship
what they donate, they will tend to give items that they really think are
worthwhile, and not to “dump” junk materials into the book drive’s in-box,
which is good!
A few last notes
on the business side of shipping books to Israel: We have NEVER heard of
a book drive
that raised more money to ship books than it did books to ship (we should
all HAVE such problems!)
We have heard of book drives that raised more books than they did money.
There are two things to keep
in mind if this happens:
(a) if part of what was collected isn’t worth shipping to Israel, DON’T
ship it.
Items that belong in recycling should go to recycling. Books with very
strong “adult” content, books with
very advanced vocabularies and set in small print without illustrations,
etc. should go to your local library
(don’t forget, the people you are sending these books to are between the
ages of 8 and 18, and most of
them read below their reading levels because English is a foreign language
for them – if you don’t think that
an American high school student can manage some particular book, rest
assured that an Israeli, who is
struggling with English as a foreign language, won’t be able to).
(b) Book drives HAVE had success raising additional money after they have
finished collecting books – bake sales, lemonade sales, and local
publicity can all work to get the money pulled together to get those books
mailed. A recent beautiful example of this was the work done by a Bat
Mitzvah, who raised a ton of books – literally, 2,000 pounds – and then
proceeded to raise the money to ship all of those books out to Israel.
What did this young lady have besides her outstanding dedication, talent
and determination? She had a wonderful family and a wonderful community
backing her up, and all together, they made it happen. You can read more
about her story in the YOU CAN HELP section of the Books for Israel
Project website. The main problem in instances like this is that you have
to have a place to store your books while the money comes in to send them
on their way. Which brings up an important point – be sure you’ve figured
out where to store books before you start collecting, or they could all
end up in your living room!
What about publicity?
Doing
local publicity in whatever form is most appropriate for your book drive
is high recommended, both before, during and after the book drive. In
putting together your leaflets, press interviews, spot announcements for
local radio stations, or website blurbs for your synagogue, church or
school, please feel free to go ahead and talk about the flagship school
and the school cluster that you’ve committed to help. It is fine to talk
about the student population, local conditions, and special problems
(including security issues, economic difficulties, etc.) that the
community you’ll be working with is encountering, etc.
For security reasons it is extremely important to please keep the
distribution of the specific details of your Israeli contact information
extremely limited, and that you notify your Israeli contact whenever you
send shipments in so that he/she knows to expect them. Your Israeli
contact will also notify you in turn when your materials are received in
Israel. This means that while it is great to talk about your flagship
school and your school cluster while doing publicity for your book drive,
please DON’T include the mailing address you will be using in any
synagogue/church/school fliers, newspaper articles or ads, or on your
website(s).
Please keep in
mind that in these days of terrorism and package bombs, broad
dissemination of your Israeli contact’s mailing address can place either
the contact themselves or mail handlers en route at risk, so please do
help us to keep them safe by limiting the distribution of your Israeli
contact’s information to only those who need to know it .
As an added security precaution, when you ship books, we also sincerely
ask that you e-mail the lead volunteer teacher of your flagship school,
detailing the number of packages you sent, the return address, any special
marks on the packaging etc. Our schools have been specifically warned
that terrorists may attempt to mix package bombs into school supply
shipments or other shipments they regularly receive. Your consideration
in detailing for your lead volunteer teacher what to expect will help keep
Israel’s postal workers, teachers and students safe.
What about a school? Where do we send
the books?
Upon receipt of confirmation from you that you will launch a book drive,
or will ship books to one of our schools as an individual book donor, we
will work with you to identify a flagship school and a school cluster that
you feel you (and your community, if you are doing this as a book drive)
would be comfortable working with. To help you with this process, each
flagship prepares a writeup for review that explains its location, student
population, particular situations affecting its local community, the
schools that will be included in its cluster to start, and its growth
plans to extend the benefits of the Project into the community, subject to
the generosity of book drives that “adopt” its cluster.
Once you accept a
particular flagship school and its school cluster, we will send you
contact the complete contact information for that particular flagship
school and put you in direct communication with the volunteer teacher
heading up the flagship school of the cluster you have adopted.
How are the Books Distributed in
Israel?
The Books for Israel
Project works with every type of school in the Israeli public school
system -- Jewish religious schools, Jewish secular schools, schools inside
and outside the "Green Line," Arab Christian and Muslim schools, Bedouin
and Druze schools. We do not have any Bahai schools working with us as of
this writing, but we welcome and will continue to welcome any Israeli
public school that does choose to apply. The Books for Israel Project has
no contact with and will not cooperate with the school system run under
the Palestinian Authority because it is actively teaching children to kill
themselves in homicidal attacks, to murder others and to hate. We do not
consider spreading the sick messages of terrorism or the propaganda of
hatred to be the function of any educator or any school system. We
consider the practice of promoting terrorism and hatred under the guise of
“education” to be a lethal and perverted practice that kills minds before
they even have a chance to develop, and a gross betrayal of the trust
extended to educators.
School participation
in the Books for Israel Project is strictly voluntary, and from the
perspective of the Israeli school teachers, parents, and others who
volunteer their time to make Books for Israel work for the students of
Israel, this is definitely a bootstrap operation. The teachers and
community volunteers involved in the Project take on responsibility for
sorting through books when they arrive and assuring that each book reaches
a school in their cluster where it will be put to good use. They end up
putting in hours of unpaid labor in addition to their hours of work as
educators.
Each of our school
clusters is headed by a “flagship” school. The volunteer teacher who
heads the flagship is the hardest working of them all. This is the
individual who, with the support of their school administration (a
prerequisite for joining the Project to begin with) takes responsibility
for serving as the local liaison to the book drives that come forward to
help, and also for organizing the local school cluster.
Each school cluster,
to start with, consists at minimum of an elementary school, a junior high,
and a high school. Each cluster submits a growth plan to indicate which
schools in the community it will reach out to and involve if the book
drives we are able to bring forward to help are generous enough to get the
minimal library needs of the first three schools in the cluster met. In
many cases, the volunteer work put in by the teachers involved in this
effort extends well beyond sorting and organizing books after hours. It
can reach all the way into community organizing to round up the donated
materials and labor involved in putting a library in place, as many of our
schools do not have either library rooms or any money to build them when
they start with Books for Israel.
To the greatest
extent possible, our lead organizers in Israel work with the local
flagships and lead volunteer teachers to help assure that each school
cluster includes a cross section of different types of schools. This
helps strengthen local community ties and bring our people in Israel
together when so many forces engaged in sowing hatred and division are
working to tear them apart and turn them against each other. Therefore,
it is very typical to see a secular Jewish school flagship heading up a
cluster which may include one or more religious Jewish schools, a Muslim
or Christian Arab school and a Druze school; a religious Jewish flagship
heading up a cluster which includes secular Jewish schools and one or more
Druze schools; a Muslim Arab flagship heading up a cluster which includes
Christian Arab schools, etc.
We tend to have a bit
more difficulty finding book drives for school clusters headed up by
Jewish public schools outside the "Green Line" and for our Muslim Arab,
Bedouin and Druze schools. However, thankfully, people here in the United
States and also in England have responded to this appeal warmly and sooner
or later we have managed to find someone to help every school that has
volunteered to work with us so far.
As of August 2004,
the book drives and book donors working with Books for Israel have
generously sent some 24 tons of books to Israel. That’s a lot of books,
but there are thousands and thousands of students in Israel still trying
to learn English without the materials in hand to do so, and we hope that
you will decide to help.
Stay in Touch!
IMPORTANT!
IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT!
PLEASE HELP OUR PEOPLE GET THROUGH THESE DIFFICULT TIMES
BY GETTING AND STAYING IN GOOD COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR SCHOOL.
This is probably one of the most vital aspects of this project.
Our teachers and students in Israel need books, certainly, but much more
than that, they need us. They need you. They need to hear that you
care. They need to hear about things that aren’t connected to the
constant violence and threats they are facing. They need encouragement
and interest in their learning and education process. In other words,
they need a good, strong line of communication coming from the English
speaking world straight to them.
PLEASE make an effort to write to your school volunteer leader, to get
your congregants, students, volunteers onto the Project’s website and
registered in so that they can write and post entries, to send items about
education and just general news. Don’t let our people become
isolated.
It is the absolutely worst thing that can happen to them right now.
For further information about how to use our donated website and
interactive portal as a communication hub, please visit our website. We
are easy to find on the web – just type
BooksforIsrael.com into your browser and press “Enter.”
We will note that there have been a couple of times
where the site had to be pulled down because hackers were attacking the
donated server. As benign and beneficial as most people may think an
effort like this is, there are unfortunately people out there in the
business of furthering hatred, and –unsurprisingly – they hate Books for
Israel and would like to see it come to an end. What is keeping this
project in place and growing is that it is rooted among caring people—like
you. If our server has to be brought down for any extended periods due to
attacks in the future, we will let all of our book drive leaders and
donors know, as we have in the past, if/when possible.
What if my school
doesn’t write back or stops writing?
First of all, please do understand that sometimes the volunteer teachers
heading up the Project on the Israeli side of this effort are under
tremendous strain, so your patience and willingness to repeat messages if
you don’t get a prompt reply is much appreciated. Many of our volunteer
teachers, in addition to having large class loads, also have children of
their own serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Whenever a terror attack
occurs, they are often involved not only in teaching, but also in trying
to stabilize their students and their families, who become frightened and
depressed in response to these onslaughts and sometimes need extensive
one-on-one work and support to be able to continue functioning. Whether
it is “fair” or “optimal” or not, the English teachers in Israel’s schools
are often picked to be members of the schools’ social work committees.
This means that they put in many volunteer hours working to try to reverse
the tremendous psychological wounds that our young people in Israel are
suffering as a result of the terrorist attacks, that they get involved in
trying to hold together families that begin to fall apart under the
economic blows the country is being dealt, that they sometimes wind up
having to intervene in the abuse cases that do spring up in increasing
numbers as some of Israel’s more fragile economic sectors are cast down
and already challenged heads of families are put under increasing stress.
In many neighborhoods, the teachers are also
involved in efforts to keep their students from going hungry, as hunger is
yet another tragic “side effect” of the economic destruction that
terrorism has brought to the little country.
Last but not least, please keep in mind that a
veteran teacher in Israel may be earning as little as $500-600
per month, while prices in Israel are NOT comparably lower, and with the
tremendous cost of defense,
taxes are higher than they are in the United States. Add all of these
factors up, and it may be understandable
if your lead teacher contact occasionally becomes exhausted or overwhelmed
and goes out of contact. However, please don’t take silence for an
answer. Prolonged silence on the part of your volunteer lead teacher may
well be a sign that there is some trouble or danger involved – if you
don’t hear from your volunteer lead teacher after a couple of tries,
please don’t just give up. If you are able to, a phonecall from the
States
can be a tremendous morale booster, but not everyone can afford the long
distance rates involved.
If your lead volunteer teacher falls silent for any extended period, or
fails to respond to you, please notify us
as soon as you can by writing to
IsraelActionMDSC@hotmail.com We will, in turn, notify our lead
organizer for Israel, Jade Bar-Shalom, who will activate our network of
contacts to check and make sure that your lead volunteer teacher and your
school are doing alright, and to get them back into communication.
Please tell
others about this project
Endorsements from educators, community leaders, religious leaders, and
people’s friends, neighbors and colleagues are absolutely the most
effective way for this project to grow. In fact, it is the most consistent
means by which this Project has grown to date. The occasional press
release or article certainly helps, but most people who are working with
us heard about the project from someone else.
Please write back
with your questions, and we can work together from there to make it
happen. In closing, again, very many thanks for your time, your interest,
and your willingness to help.
It is so very important to all of us here, and to all the students in
Israel.
Our e-mail address for donors and adoptive
communities is:
IsraelActionMDSC@hotmail.com
Any Israeli schools that you might know of are welcome
to take on responsibility
for communicating with donors from abroad and distributing books to
their own library and other schools in their communities.
Israeli schools should contact the Books for
Israel - Israel Coordinators,
Jade and Ilan Bar-Shalom, at:
b4i2002@hotmail.com
All the best -
Rena Cohen
Israel Action Committee, MDSC, PO Box 813, Rockville, MD 20848 USA
Telephone: 202-255-5959
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