Pages turn for needy families in book loan project

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
Hundreds of children from needy families around the Sharon area will be given complete sets of school books in time for the coming school year in the second year of the special BookMarket Project, reports www.local.co.il. The NIS 250,000 project, which operates in Kfar Saba, Herzliya, Hod Hasharon, Ra'anana and the South Sharon regional council, lends second-hand textbooks in good condition to needy children as well as giving them new workbooks. According to the report, the BookMarket Project was set up as a private venture by a group of businesspeople to reduce the costs to parents of funding their children's education and to encourage better consumer values, including the re-use of school books. It operates in elementary and middle schools and arranges for textbooks to pass from child to child, saving parents large outlays on new books as well as the time needed to go and purchase them. A project spokesman said that each child receives the second-hand textbooks in good condition and wrapped, while workbooks are new. At the end of the school year, the child returns the textbooks. "In the framework of our activities at schools, we understood the crisis faced by families who cannot fund their children's education basket," a BookMarket spokesman said. "A new basket of books costs about NIS 750 per year, and for a family with three children or more the cost of education can be thousands of shekels. With the help of school parents' committees, who are involved in the community, we lend these families the school books... and we donate the cost of the loans."