Dark and early Monday morning, Oct. 28, half a dozen Cornell students, along with Public Service Center (PSC) and Campus Store staff members, boxed about 3,500 mostly used textbooks for shipment to Afghanistan, among other ports of call. Select volumes are bound for either the University of Kabul or the Kabul Polytechnic Institute.
The Cornell books now are being trucked cross-country to the Asia Foundation's Books for Asia program in San Francisco. Books for Asia staff will sort and assess the shipment and books will be sent to Islamabad, Pakistan. From there, a more perilous overland journey begins when the freight is trucked to Karachi and Kabul.
This year marks the first time since 1979 the Asia Foundation has shipped books to Afghanistan and the first shipment of books to Afghanistan from Cornell. Not all the books will make it to Kabul, for reasons that have little to do with world affairs.
"Because we're restarting the program after more than 20 years, we are being extra fussy about the quality of the texts," said Gavin Tritt, director of Books for Asia. "But this is a quality donation of considerable size and these books will greatly help in our efforts to restock the libraries of Kabul and elsewhere."
Books that don't make the grade will be sent onto to Books for Asia's other overseas offices.
The 320 cartons of Cornell books were hauled off Oct. 28 without ceremony, marking the successful completion of a process that involved many campus constituencies. The principle Cornell players in the project are: Richard McDaniel, associate vice president of Cornell Business Services; Cece Camacho, PSC's assistant director of school programs; and Thomas Romantic, director of the Cornell Book Store (CBS) business office, along with the CBS staff and Cornell Tradition student volunteers.
The project was inspired by Cornell alumnus David Burak '67, M.F.A. '80. His vision, ambitious in it original scope, set the process in motion. By comparison to Burak's original concept, Monday's freight was modest -- but significant.
"We were responding to pleas for help from Afghani educators," said Burak, whose efforts earlier this year catalyzed a series of meetings at Cornell on the project. Burak also wrote a grant request to the Cornell Community Coordinating Committee, securing $1,500 in funding for Monday's shipment.
McDaniel and Camacho bore the lion's share of coordinating a logistically difficult hands-on effort and Camacho pulled Monday's team together at the last minute, with help from Romantic and the Cornell Tradition.
"What a crew we made," said Camacho. "I really appreciate everyone's efforts in making this service project happen, from securing funding for the project to loading and boxing books."
Cornell Tradition's Nathaniel Guest said Monday's effort was a natural fit for an ongoing used-book drive started by previous Tradition students.
"Most people aren't aware of the tremendous number of returned or unused textbooks that move through the campus store of a university as big as Cornell -- literally thousands each semester," he said. "For three years now, campus store staff have very kindly and generously worked with us to collect, organize and pack the hundreds of boxes of unused books for shipment. Thankfully, Cornell itself has been helpful in the endeavor, uncharacteristically cutting through the usual red tape to give us the storage space and personnel to make the drive successful. Each year we have to decide where the books will go and how to pay for them. It's great to know that little gifts from caring Cornellians will -- if this program continues -- make a difference throughout the world."
McDaniel said that, while the project shows future promise, it will take more than one big push to keep it going.
"We would like to see this become a sustainable effort, not only to ship textbooks to Afghanistan, but to other countries as well," said McDaniel, who assisted in coordinating the Books for Asia shipment. "I'd like to see that happen."
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