A book drive based at Plymouth State University to benefit a rural school in Lesotho collected over 2,000 books over the past two weeks. The books will be donated to the Fusi School in rural Lesotho, a small country located within the South African region. Other drives across the nation collected books to benefit schools in the rural area as well. The Fusi School has about 100 students. The book drive, organized by Plymouth State University senior Thato Ramoabi and the PSU Rotoract Club was able to collect the books for grammar school aged children with the help of both the PSU campus and surrounding communities. “We are done packing for the night and we have collected 1,500 books just in Mary Lyon, so I think it will be well over 2,000 when we consolidate and add the ones from Pemi, the congregational church and the library,” Ramoabi said. Most of the collections were based at residence halls on campus. Some agencies even offered to purchase new books for the drive if they weren’t receiving a lot of donations. Many books were donated by the Lin-Wood Elementary School and the Strafford Elementary School, along with several churches located in Amherst and Manchester. Ramoabi and other volunteers spent the evening of Dec. 1 cataloging and packaging books. It took over four and half hours to successfully pack the books by author and publisher in order to make the transition to the school’s library more successful. In order to be deemed acceptable for donation, books had to fall within a set of regulations. They had to be age appropriate for elementary school aged children, “All the books donated have been age appropriate, which is amazing,” Ramoabi, said. The Plymouth Congregational church also helped drum up donations. Many of the 2,000 books collected came from parishioners, their families and friends. The group worked in conjunction with Less Aids Lesotho and the African Library Project. Ramoabi attributes the success of the drive to teamwork throughout the campus and the community, “We had a lot of other people getting excited [about the drive].” This is the first time the book drive has been held at PSU, and it came at a time when other book drives were going on in the area. This was coupled with the fact that the drive had to take place over Thanksgiving Break. A lot of money was also donated to the organization to cover the shipping costs. The Lincoln Public Library contributed fifty dollars to the cause, while the Plymouth area Rotary donated another five hundred. The PSU Student Senate also agreed to cover the left over shipping costs. The 2,000 plus books will be shipped from PSU to New Orleans on Fri. Dec. 4. From there they will join books from other book drives and will be sent overseas. The PSU book drive benefited the Fusi School, but different book drives will benefit other rural schools in the region. The African Library Project was founded by a British woman who was teaching at a small school in Lesotho. Motivated by the sheer enthusiasm her students exhibited when flipping through a book, she made it her mission to make books more accessible for youth in rural areas. This is the first book drive PSU has done for the African Library Project, but it won’t be the last. Plans are in the works for another book drive.