For many elementary-school children in Camden, the perfect holiday gift wouldn’t be a Wii or an X-box — it would, instead, be a new book for their elementary school library.
Haddonfield Memorial High School senior Haley Olberg is trying to brighten the lives of many Camden school children as she is putting forth a call to the community for new and gently used children books.
Oberg, 18, is opening up her book drive to the Haddonfield community, as the HMHS senior is looking to donate enough books to help improve the Lanning Square Elementary School library in Camden.
She has already collected more than 2,000 books to donate to the library, and would like to extend her gift to other elementary schools in Camden.
“It all started over the summer. I’m a part of a teen volunteer organization called Quixote Quest. Over the summer, I started to volunteer for an elementary school in Camden. It was a summer school,” she said. “I got the idea to do the book drive after seeing their library. It was extremely small; just a few shelves of books, and you could tell how frustrating it was for the kids and their teachers. They didn’t have a lot of options to pick out books or anything. I knew I wanted to do something for them.”
Oberg has been involved in Quixote Quest since her sophomore year. The group seeks local students who are looking to make a difference in their communities through volunteerism, Olberg said, and requires its members to volunteer two hours of service each week.
While volunteering at Lanning Elementary over the summer, she noticed the library didn’t have much of a collection for its students. It was also hesitant to actually lend out books to the students to take home. If they were lost or damaged, that would reduce the facility’s books even more, Oberg said. It was no way for a library to operate for young students, she said.
So, after a leadership camp at Duke University last summer, Oberg came up with the idea to host a book drive for the Camden elementary school.
So far, she has collected more than 2,000 books to distribute to the library, as well as students at the school. Many of the students will be able to take them home as gifts, she said, which is an added bonus.
“The middle school gave me a ton of books, and they’re going to do a collection for all three elementary schools after the holiday,” Oberg said.
Greg Williams, from Walk a Crooked Mile Books, Philadelphia, donated a generous amount of books — and Barnes and Noble in Cherry Hill agreed to allow Haley and her friends to wrap gifts in the store this past weekend with any donations going toward buying books for the book drive.
“I’ve learned so much more about volunteering, it’s changed my perspective of things. We all tend to get wrapped up in what we want, or what we need, but when you go out and see how these kids in Camden are so much less fortunate, you just want to help,” she said. “A lot of the kids are so grateful and appreciative of anything. You want to give them hope and make their futures a little more brighter.”
Want to help out Haley and donate a new and gently used children’s books for ages 3 to 14 (Pre-K through eighth-grade)? Haley can be contacted at haleysbookdrive@gmail.com.
