By Theresa Hogue
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Friday, May 2, 2008 12:00 am
Students collect recipes for cookbook; profits will go toward shipping costs
Jen Johnson was smiling broadly Wednesday morning as she walked by box after box filled with books. It was only the night before that Johnson sent an e-mail to students around Corvallis High School, asking them to donate quality hard and softcover books to send to libraries in Ethiopia. Already, the response was overwhelming.
Sitting in Colleen Works' classroom, Johnson and fellow students Kat Gillies-Rector and Megan Jones discussed details of their door-to-door book collection campaign, which they hope to launch this weekend. The trio is part of a new one-credit course at CHS called "Political Action Workshop." The focus of the class, taught by Works, is creating and following through with a project that creates change either locally or globally.
"There are all kinds of interesting educational opportunities," that are coming out of the class, Works said, as students come together to pursue different types of activism.
Jones and Johnson have family connections to eastern Africa; Jones has relatives in Eritrea, and Johnson's grandfather worked under Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s. Johnson is also on the board of the Corvallis-Gondar (Ethiopia) Sister Cities Association.
The students decided to team up and create a project that would help Ethiopians, and decided their emphasis would be on literacy. Jones said she figured other students would be creating projects that involved asking for money, and she figured a book drive would be a different approach.
"I'm an avid reader myself," Jones said. "It sounded like something the Corvallis community could get engaged in."
"We're working to expand into the university and the greater community," Gillies-Rector said.
The students quickly realized they didn't have the time, money or organizing skills to ship books to land-locked Ethiopia themselves, so they decided to work with the nonprofit Ethiopia Reads, whose primary focus is getting books into Ethiopian libraries. Not only will they be gathering new and gently used books from the community, but they'll also be raising the money for shipping costs, which could total about $9,000.
But instead of directly asking for funds, the students have come up with a creative way to solicit donations, through the publication of a cookbook which will include recipes donated from many local sources.
"We're trying to put together a Corvallis community cookbook that includes recipes from local residents, restaurants and maybe from the farmers market," Johnson said.
Johnson said creating the cookbook would not only showcase the cultural and agricultural diversity of the area, but it is a way to create a local product they can sell to benefit their Ethiopia project rather than just asking for donations.
There are several hurdles ahead as they move forward on the project. First, they must collect original recipes from as many sources as possible to compile them into the cookbook. Then they have to find a local publisher to work with, and business sponsors to help pay for the publication. Then they'll sell the book in local bookstores, and the proceeds will help pay for the book shipment costs.
Although Gillies-Rector and Jones are seniors, and they will be graduating this June, they have promised to keep helping Johnson with the project through the summer, and long after grades are dispatched. For the teens, the project has become bigger than the class itself.
"We're willing to see this project to its conclusion," Johnson said.
To donate recipes to the Corvallis Cooks project, e-mail corvalliscooks@gmail.com. To inquire about making a book donation, e-mail corvallistoethiopia@gmail.com or look for a drop box at area schools.
For more on Ethiopia Reads, see www.ethiopiareads.com.