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Community Corner

Perserverance: E-W Senior Leads Team in Collecting Books for the Needy

The Global Peace Youth Corps gathered more than 400 donated books during last weekend's Rock 'n' Read Marathon at Edmonds Bookshop.

In a story about at the , Edmonds Patch mentioned the efforts of the Global Peace Youth Corps, who collected more than 400 used children's books.

Since that time, we've learn some more information about that international organization's efforts in Edmonds.

The drive was led by Edmonds-Woodway High School senior H.J. Kim, who coordinates GPYC's high-school program's community service—which includes both E-W and Meadowdale High School—as well as GPYC efforts at local middle schools.

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Here's Kim's thoughts on the book drive:

Last year, I helped out Ms. Stewart (my IB English teacher at EWHS) collect a box of books with my Warrior Peace Fund club. However, I wanted to find a better way to help the Edmonds community through the Rock and Read Marathon this year.

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So I proposed to my GPYC group if we can dedicate one day to do a book drive for children in Edmonds who can’t afford to buy books. Since GPYC is a youth and education oriented nonprofit organization, I thought it was very profound to volunteer for the sake of these children.

We planned very thoroughly and did a two hour door-to-door book drive, going around in Edmonds asking for book donations. We would get rejected many times, but every sixth house a family would donate about 10 books. We all thought the door-to-door experience was very profound, because we got all of the family members involved.

When we asked the parents for book donations and why we are doing this, they got their children to look for books that they don’t read so that other children who are underprivileged can read them. In a way, these kids helped these children in need of help. I felt that it was a great experience for us to get in touch with the community and also expand our core values of living for the greater good, teamwork, ownership and dreaming big for the Edmonds community.

We were rewarded with more than 400 books in two hours. I think this achievement shows just how much the young people have the power to accomplish big things when they work together with passion.

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