Paly’s Global Literacy Club will hold its third African Library Project book drive this spring, in addition to a fall semester clothes drive for schoolchildren in Afghanistan, in concert with the non-profit organization Trust In Education.

Club president senior Sarah Martignetti hopes that the book drive will be as or more successful than in past years.

“Last year, we partnered with Hoover and Escondido [elementary schools], so we’re going to run the book drive and try to get as many elementary schools as we can to help out,” Martignetti said. “In the past we said we wanted 1,000 books, and I think that limited people, so we’re just going to get as many [books] as we can, hopefully more than two libraries-worth.”

Club vice president senior Aaron Ebert expects that the upcoming clothes drive for Afghani children will also produce good returns.

“In the past, they have [TIE has] done warm clothes drives, so I thought we could do a warm clothes drive at Paly, because I was listening to somebody the other day, who said ‘I just threw out three bags of clothes,'” Ebert said. “I think, in our school, we can collect a lot of clothes to send [to Afghanistan].”

The African Library Project, a Portola Valley-based non-profit that organizes book drives and similar events in the U.S. to build libraries in African countries, recently presented the GLC with the Global Literacy Champion Award for its work.

The club, in concert with the African Library Project, organized a book drive last year that collected over 2,000 books and allowed the creation of two new high school libraries in Swaziland.

Paly librarian Rachel Kellerman, who helped organize the Paly book drive, expressed her satisfaction with the result.

“It was very exciting to know that a library that wasn’t going to have books got them,” Kellerman said.

Martignetti originally formed the Global Literacy Club in 2007 with an eye to filling a void in Paly’s network of charitable clubs.

“It [the issue of literacy] was something I’d always been interested in, and I felt like there wasn’t a club at Paly about that,” Martignetti said. “There are a lot of clubs that send clothes or just raise money, but we really wanted to make a direct impact, so this was perfect.”

The club has been very effective in this endeavor to bring literacy to all. In two years, it has created libraries for three separate schools — two in Swaziland last year, and one in Botswana the year before — providing books for hundreds of students who had previously been without them.

Martignetti has not only been impressed by the club’s ability to improve the lives of others, but has also discovered the impact the club has had on her life.

“That feeling of having it [the book drive] finally complete, and it only took three weeks and wasn’t impossible — especially this year when we built two libraries,” Martignetti said. “That’s just the best feeling, because it’s so stressful, but when it’s over, it feels good.”

According to Ebert, the most profound effect the Global Literacy Club has had on him is the realization that he is capable of doing so much good for others, even as a high school student.

“I’ve come to realize the power of one, and how my peers and I can make a difference,” Ebert said. “Really what’s come out of it is what a difference we can make from over here, when we have all these resources and they [the people receiving aid] have nothing, and just the impact we can have on their lives.”