At Carl W. Goetz Middle School in Jackson, New Jersey, students, faculty and staff have found a way to change the lives of their counterparts living halfway around the world in Botswana, Africa, by collecting an astonishing eighteen libraries worth of books in the last two years.

On July 11th, the African Library Project, based in California, awarded their inaugural Compassion in Action Award for an outstanding book drive conducted by an organization to Carl W. Goetz Middle School. Last year Goetz broke the African Library Project’s record for the most libraries started in a single book drive by collecting over 5,000 children’s books and starting 5 primary school libraries in Botswana. This year the school collected nearly 14,000 gently used children’s books to start thirteen libraries, bringing their total to eighteen libraries in two years. The school also raised the funds to ship the books.

Goetz’s Library Media Specialist Lisa Crate led their amazing book drives, supported by the entire student body and faculty. Crate inspired students to collect books by teaching them about the challenges Africans face. Individual students went door-to-door in their neighborhoods collecting books, and classrooms competed against each other to see who could collect the most books. Goetz also received support from Barnes and Noble Bookstore and the Scholastic Book Fair. All in all, Goetz ended up shipping 127 boxes of books to the African Library Project’s warehouse. The books were then consolidated with books from book drives around the country before being containerized and shipped to Africa on July 3rd.