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Eric Tang traveled to Africa to build a library in a Zambian refugee camp after his 2004 graduation from UCLA.

“It’s mutually empowering,” he said, “not just for the refugee, but for the college student as well.”

This year, a book donation drive will be held at UCLA from finals week throughout spring quarter to provide money for refugee relief and education programs.

Tang, a participant in the group Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth, ended up establishing the largest library in any refugee camp in the world – about 25,000 books. With the group’s help, refugee students cleared out an unoccupied warehouse, painted several murals and created their own cataloguing system that reflected the unique curriculum taught in African schools.

Tang’s trip was financed with the help of friends, family and a book he self-published, but this year’s wave of UCLA humanitarians to Africa are using a different method to raise money: book donations.

“We want to bring these books out of people’s closets that are just collecting dust,” said Erica Mackey, a fourth-year organismic biology, ecology and evolution student, who is working with Students for International Change, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization working to limit the impact of HIV in northern Tanzania, an area with an HIV rate of 20 percent.

Mackey’s roommate and fellow SIC member, Audrey Desiderato, a fourth-year political science and economics student, said “there are so many used books people don’t know what to do with.” Mackey and Desiderato will be traveling to Tanzania this summer, and hope to test 10,000 people for HIV with SIC’s mobile testing unit. At $3 a test, the number of Tanzanians tested will hinge heavily on the success of this UCLA book drive.

Diana Essex, a second-year international development studies student, has partnered with the SIC members to raise money for her own FORGE microproject this summer. She plans to establish a community center based around art and music. “My idea is to feed the soul, even when you have trouble feeding the mouth,” she said.

Working with Better World Books, United Parcel Service and Beta Theta Pi, UCLA students Mackey, Desiderato and Essex have launched the book donation program for finals week of winter quarter, and intend to have it go on through spring quarter.

Book bins will be placed at book buy-back centers at Ackerman Union, residential halls and in front of Beta Theta Pi on the corner of Strathmore and Gayley avenues. The bins will be staffed by volunteers to inform book donors about their organization’s mission. UPS has agreed to ship the donated books from UCLA to Better World Books, which will give $1 per book donated toward the SIC and FORGE missions. Better World Books said books that aren’t suitable for shipping to African libraries and schools will be sold online in the U.S. and the proceeds donated to African causes.

Fritz Gheen, Director of the Pacific Region for Better World Books, said since his organization’s inception several years ago, it has shipped approximately 200,000 books to Africa.

As a nonprofit organization, Gheen said, “We don’t make a financial profit, we make a social profit.” In the process, he said, “We empower students on campus, taking books off campus that are going to be thrown away, saving them from the landfill, and ultimately helping students in Africa.”