1/12/2006
From here to there
After returning from India, I couldn't help but notice the abundance of books we have here. Walk into Citizens Library in Washington during the annual book sale and you'll know what I mean. Most people are reluctant to discard books and are more than willing to give them away. Later, I learned that publishers of textbooks have millions of unused volumes available for donation.
The problem is not acquiring books for people who need them most; the problem is getting the books to them. Books are heavy. The weight of even a small box of books makes the cost prohibitive when the destination the other side of the world.
We learrned in sending books to Russia that it is much more cost-efficient to send books in large volumes - the larger the volume, the better the price. One box of books might cost $400 to send to Siberia by UPS. But for $6,800, you can send 400 boxes in a 20-foot shipping container. For $8,000, you can send 800 boxes in a 40-foot container.
Despite the fact that it's much less expensive to ship books to India (you must buy the container itself when shipping to Siberia because there is no return traffic), we could never get a book project going there. I had made many friends and contacts during my trip there, and we talked often about the possibility, but the talk never amounted to much.
But a couple of years ago, one of those friends, Paul Jacob, was visiting the U.S. and came to the area. Since we'd met, we had both joined Rotary, and suddenly the idea of a book project became more feasible. Now I had a Rotary Club at my end to help collect and pack the books, and he had a Rotary Club on the Indian end to help get the books through customs, store them and distribute them to schools and libraries.
I wondered: Could I finally fulfill that promise?
