The Epic Book Drive, put together by Girl Up Club, began Monday, Dec. 1 and ends Friday, Dec. 19. Girl Up Club is asking for students to donate gently used books for low-income children in the community, ages six to ten. Collection boxes for the books are in all resource centers, the activities office, and outside the main office.

“This is the first big project that Girl Up has done that fully benefits the community,” states Senior Jessica Saffold, the president of Girl Up Club at Smoky.

Girl Up is a club that focuses on bringing education to girls in other countries who lack those opportunities. Saffold had also decided to do a project strictly for the community. She searched for ideas on dosomethingproject.org, created by the same organization which had the idea of jeans for teens, a community project done last year. After coming across several ideas, Saffold found the idea for the epic book drive.

“Reading is a skill that, if it’s not nurtured at an early age, can be a real problem,” Saffold reasoned.

She chose to coordinate the epic book drive as Girl Up’s sponsored project because many
children lack books to read, and older people like high school students often have children’s books that they no longer need or want.

“I definitely hope to do more of these community projects with Girl Up in the future,” exclaims Saffold.

One of the future community projects Girl Up Club hopes to be involved with in the near future is The Warren Village Holiday Shop on Saturday, Dec. 13. The holiday shop is designed to help women and children who have suffered from domestic abuse to have a better holiday season.

“They allow the battered and abused women and children to have one big gift, one small gift, a book, and a stuffed animal for example,” Saffold explains. “We’ll be there to help make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to get what they want.”