For the first project of the new Girl Scout troop at Montclaire Elementary School in Los Altos, co-troop leader Caroline Ouyang wanted her second-graders to start off on a good note – an endeavor she said would contribute to the community and provide opportunities for others.
After hearing about all of the toy drives around the holidays, Ouyang decided the troop should complement those efforts with a book drive. They earmarked the donated books primarily for the nonprofit Access Books Bay Area.
“Our major goal was simply to initiate our girls into the troop by doing something that gives back and that isn’t just about them taking or receiving,” Ouyang said, “but really about them doing something that’s altruistic and with consideration for others and being aware that there are others in the community who might not have all the resources that they have.”
Co-troop leader Avani Shah echoed Ouyang’s sentiments, adding that they emphasized “giving back, teaching empathy to the kids and making sure that they’re having a positive learning experience and can gain confidence to be strong leaders.”
“These are the things that come to mind to me,” Shah said, “and I want to make sure they get a chance to learn as part of this troop.”
The troop collected more than 800 books in a span of only two weeks, a feat Ouyang called “remarkable.”
Doing so first required the girls to decorate boxes during a troop meeting, according to Ouyang, and then set out to collect books by asking friends and relatives for them. They also went door-to-door seeking books. They ended the drive by holding a book drop-off event for the community at Montclaire.
“(I wanted to) help other kids get books because they don’t really have the money to get books and to learn,” said troop member Eidyn Ouyang Yeh, who added that her favorite book is about gemstones because they bring her a sense of calm.
One hurdle the troop faced was competing initiatives. Ouyang said Montclaire was running its own crayon initiative, making it harder for the troop’s drive to be noticed by the school.
“It was initially challenging for us to get our book drive on the school radar,” she said. “We were very lucky that eventually we were able to squeeze ourselves in, but it was not as simple as we had anticipated it to be.”
The drive is one way to teach troop members valuable skills that will benefit them through-out their life, Ouyang said, such as money management and digital literacy.
“Girl Scouts is really special in that they give a kind of a guidebook and badges that you can earn, but there isn’t necessarily an order or exact way of doing things,” Shah said. “Every troop can have their own secret seasoning.”
For more information on Access Books Bay Area, visit accessbooksbayarea.org.
