Cape Coral, FL - Thousands of used textbooks departed from Oasis Middle School Tuesday morning bound for three public schools in the Bahamas.
More
than 2,000 textbooks, teacher's guides, workbooks and supplemental
materials were donated by the city of Cape Coral Charter System to help
three small schools on Cat Island, where five to 15 students regularly
share one book.
The city charter system is adopting a new
textbook series for next year while the older versions are on route to
Cat Island through the efforts of the Naples-based Freedom Water
Foundation, which has worked with Bahamian schools since 2006.
Regionally,
the foundation's mission is to provide boating opportunities and
marine-related education to at-risk or disabled youth.
"We will
be able to supply every child on the island with a textbook," said John
Puig, director of special projects at Freedom Water Foundation. "They
will go from one textbook a class to a full classroom set."
School
administrators, teachers, foundation representatives and charter
students gathered at the school Tuesday to pack and load the materials
onto a truck donated by Saks Fifth Avenue. The cargo will ship to Fort
Lauderdale and an ocean freighter provided by G&G Shipping will
carry it across the Caribbean Sea to the small, hook-shaped island.
Puig
estimates that the students will receive the books within two weeks and
will have all the materials they need for grades one to five.
Oasis Middle teacher John Mileff organized the textbook donation which also included cassettes and compact discs.
"These books would've gone to a recycling bin and wouldn't have been used again," he said.
Students
in the charter system are encouraged to take up social causes in order
to make connections with other schools and students from across the
world, Mileff said.
Last school year the students paid $1 to wear
jeans - the charter system has a strict dress code - and the proceeds
facilitated Tuesday's project.
Also included in the shipment is
28,500 emergency meals donated by the Naples Rotary Club that will feed
the local population during a hurricane or other natural disaster.
Cat
Island is known internationally for its unspoiled beaches and
landscape, although past the resorts and tourist enclaves lie villages
entrenched in poverty. The island lies 130 miles southeast of the
Bahamian capital of Nassau and is the childhood home of Academy Award
winning Actor Sidney Poitier.
Investments to the island are
typically earmarked for the tourist industry and not to the people
inhabiting on the island, explained Mileff. He believes the donation
will help the island to change its educational system for the better.
"They
have resorts, but people living on the island live in third-world
poverty," he said. "This will reform the curriculum for the whole
island in a way their government could never support."
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