For most students, Saturday morning provides a welcome respite from books.
This past Saturday, however, Amber Ervin, Lynne Putnam and Christina Skirvin were surrounded by books — thousands of them. At a warehouse in West Eugene, the University juniors were helping the St. Vincent de Paul Society sort a portion of the 40 tons of discarded books they receive each month.
The three women are members of Alpha Kappa Psi, a business fraternity volunteering for St. Vincent’s. The fraternity will also help with many other projects this year — from assembling holiday food boxes to assisting with marketing strategy.
The holiday season tends to be a time of year when people look for ways to give back to their community.
Sheyla Norte, volunteer coordinator for Food for Lane County, said she gets a number of calls from people interested in helping out on Thanksgiving and Christmas, although they need volunteers year-round.
“We’re not doing anything during the holidays that we don’t do all the time,” she said.
Nevertheless, Norte welcomes the opportunity to talk to people about the organization’s needs. Many of the people who call during the holidays, she said, wind up becoming regular volunteers.
“It’s a very busy time for us, but that’s good,” she said.
Terry McDonald, director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, said that for St. Vincent’s, there is no such thing as having too many volunteers.
“If this is the time of year they feel most comfortable doing it, they should do it,” he said.
The book-sorting project is overwhelming, to say the least. On Saturday, the fraternity members worked through eight Dumpster-sized boxes, each of which held up to 1,000 pounds of books. While most of the books are carefully sorted by subject on a shelf along the wall, some are sent flying across the room into a box of rejects destined to be recycled at a paper mill.
Nearby, about 20 more giant containers of books, from as far away as Seattle and San Francisco, are stacked two high and two deep, a monolithic reminder that there is no shortage of work to do.
Rebecca Larson, community development director for St. Vincent’s, said most of the books will be given away or resold in the society’s thrift stores. Proceeds from the thrift stores help fund emergency services for the needy, affordable housing and job training programs, she said.
“Volunteers are so helpful in getting this done,” Larson said.
McDonald sees a lot of potential in the vast mountain of books. He proudly shows a tattered but intact 1838 tome about atheism, one of the many antiquarian curiosities rescued from the pile.
“It’s amazing what the waste stream has in it,” he said.
McDonald emphasized the importance of volunteer work.
“At some point, somehow, we should all be involved in direct service to one another,” he said. “Life is in the giving.”
For Putnam, the motivation for helping out was clear.
“It makes you feel good, because we’re doing stuff that wouldn’t get done,” she said.
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