BOOK DRIVE ORIGINAL PROPOSAL

December 12, 2002

For the first time, the organizers of the TESOL Arabia Conference would like to institute a book drive at the conference. We would like to collect textbooks and professional volumes from members and disburse them to affiliates and institutions around the globe who do not have access to materials and other resources that we have.

To this end, we will put out a flyer advertising the book drive slated to begin at the first of the year and continue throughout the conference. We will invite members to donate books that are in very good condition. We will then catalog them into a database and arrange for their shipment to different locations. I have already discussed this initiative with Ruth Petzold (Regional English Language Officer for Russia) and Bridget Gersten (RELO for North Africa) who are affiliated with the Public Affairs Officer of the United States Embassy in Russia and Tunisia respectively. They have agreed to facilitate the shipment of books through diplomatic mail pouches to these two areas. If we collect enough books we will contact other RELOs to see if similar arrangements can be made.

The proposed name of the book drive is "Teachers4Teachers" or "Spreading the Word". Comm Tech students from Dubai Men’s College are already working on logos for these two names. A proposal for the creation of a cataloging database with six fields (title of book, author of book, publisher, donated by, type of book, sent to) has been forwarded to Jeff Rossiter. He has agreed to incorporate this project into his ACCESS class. SAC officer, Jassim Al Rubaya, has been put in charge of collecting prizes for the book draw. A draft of a letter is attached to this memo for your perusal. Sheila Barry and Belinda Palubiski have agreed to coordinate the project both prior to and during the conference.As soon as flyers can be produced we would like to begin the collection of books. We will do so in the following ways:

• invite English language teachers and TESOL Arabia members to donate books on ELT and professional volumes for language education
• for every 5 books that are accepted, the person will be given a raffle ticket that will then be entered into a draw that will take place at the conference
• depending on the number of prizes that are donated by local businesses, we will conduct an hourly draw at the conference and list the names of winners on a board next to the conference registration desk
• winners of prizes will collect their prizes throughout the conference
• it is hoped that airlines or area hotels will donate tickets/hotel packages to be used as a "grand prize" for the closing ceremonies
• during the last half of the spring semester, we will catalog the books and make arrangements for their shipment to needy locations

We hope that this project meets with your approval. Please let us know if you have any ideas that would make the project better.

To see updates on the progress of the book drive, click here.