On Saturday September 6, 2014, I attended Stockton’s semi-annual Day of Service. Day of Service is an event where several organizations meet and perform service activities on campus and at nearby locations. We arrived at the campus center at 8 a.m. where we were greeted with a free t-shirt and breakfast. We then moved to the event center to choose which organization we would be donating our time and effort to. There were so many organizations and clubs present- there was truly something that everyone would be interested in.

I chose to volunteer my time to Books without Borders, a Stockton club that collects books and sends them to people who would not otherwise have access to them, such as children in third world countries. We went out to their on-campus trailer, which was packed with boxes filled with books of all genres. Our job was to unload the trailer, organize the books by genre, and finally repackage them to send them to a country that needs them.

Overall, this experience was truly eye opening in that I never really stepped back to look at how fortunate we really are. It is amazing that we take for granted something that seems so simple and trivial as books. Books are something we have always had easy access to and do not think much of how fortunate we are to have them. They are something that we are so used to having that we don’t realize that other countries do not have the same opportunity to access them. Thanks to programs such as Books without Borders, we can help to spread knowledge and send books to children in these less fortunate countries. This enriches their learning experience and allows them to experience things they otherwise would never have the opportunity to.