This year’s Live-in for Literacy event at York, where four students from Discover the Reality of Educating All Minds (DREAM) at York slept at the Scott Library over the course of a week, raised $3,180 towards building school libraries in developing countries. The event was held across Canada from Jan. 27 to Feb. 3 to raise money to build six school libraries.
Right: Vanessa Hering and Lingsha Hu holding the donation box outside of their tent pitched in York's Scott Library for a week
“This is up almost $600 from what we raised last year and greatly contributes overall to the approximately $20,000 raised by all of the campuses participating in the event,” says Schulich School of Business student Shane Hebel, director of corporate relations for DREAM at York. The funds will go to the Room to Read charity, which has already built nine school libraries in Nepal, four school libraries in India and one computer lab in Cambodia.
“Although we didn't get as much sleep as we would have liked, the amount of money that we ended up raising made it worth the effort,” says Hebel.
Left: Shane Hebel and Alicia Gutierrez holding the fort in the Scott Library during Live-In for Literacy week
In addition to Hebel, first-year Schulich School of Business students Vanessa Hering and Lingsha Hu, along with fellow business student Alicia Gutierrez, took turns sleeping at the library.
“The campaign is important because we believe that literacy and education are keystones that help on the path to eradicating poverty. Children in the communities where the libraries are being built do not have access to facilities that can teach them how to read or give them an education,” says Hebel.
“As a faction of the UN Millennium Goals, we think that giving a primary level education to children worldwide will greatly increase their quality of life and can help to eradicate poverty.”
For more information, visit the Live-in for Literacy website. Click here for information on the school library being built in Nepal, and click here for information on the computer lab in Cambodia.