During the past 18 years, 3.5 million books have passed through a small, unassuming office at 799 Roosevelt Road in Glen Ellyn.
The books — mostly educational — have gone to schools in low-income communities in the Chicago area, to schools in DuPage County, to poor African countries, and to children in all sorts of places in between.
All of this is thanks in large part to a woman named Kay McKeen, founder of the group School and Community Assistance for Recycling and Composting Education, a nonprofit that uses the acronym SCARCE.
People, mostly teachers and librarians, donate books and other education-related supplies to SCARCE headquarters on a daily basis, and in turn, teachers are welcome to show up and take whatever they want for their classrooms for free.
Books are not the only things that flow into and out of SCARCE headquarters. On Dec. 29, Wheaton Warrenville South High School seniors Katie Litterio and Lance Williams spent part of their winter break peeling labels from crayons.
“Yup, peelin’ crayons,” Katie said.
Once naked, the crayons are then melted down and molded into new, larger crayons for teachers to give to students.
Katie said she heard about the opportunity to volunteer at SCARCE through one of her teachers. She needed to complete community service hours in order to pass her environmental biology class.
“It’s just a good thing to do. It helps children. I don’t know, it’s just something little you can do to help them,” Katie said.
Lance said he came to SCARCE on his own to volunteer.
“I came here out of the kindness of my heart,” he said.
Erin Kennedy, who works for SCARCE, said about 50 students from Wheaton Warrenville South have volunteered during the past semester.
Sharon Carney, an art teacher for St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, rummaged Dec. 29 through a room packed with organizers, folders and books, searching for things to take. It was her first time within the SCARCE warehouse and she was amazed.
“It’s hard to believe that everything is free,” Carney said.
McKeen said 70 percent of the books that come into her organization go back into the immediate community. The rest go to whoever calls her first.
Inside, SCARCE headquarters are anything but scarce. Rows of bookshelves carry hundreds of old school books. Teachers walk between close rows of bookshelves picking the materials they want.
Everything is put to use. In the back of the building, SCARCE employees put their lunch scraps into a worm farm for composting. Metal spirals are pulled from old notebooks to be recycled. Supplies too worn down to be reused are torn apart for their raw resources and recycled.
Where space is limited, boxes of books lay on the floor. One box contained slightly worn paperback editions of James Joyce’s “The Dubliners.” Another box contained stacks of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.” Both are waiting for some teacher, somewhere, to call and ask for them.
But McKeen has two rules. The books must be given away for free and there must be a need. She said she regularly receives calls from all over the world and she does what she can to move her inventory.
McKeen hopes with more schools showing concern for the environment, and more school districts concerned with saving money, more teachers will take advantage of SCARCE’s warehouse. But she also needs more books, more art supplies, anything that can be given to a student in need.
Want to help?
For information on how to get involved or donate, visit bookrescue.org or call (630) 545-9710.
Glen Ellyn, IL —
