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By Nino Lojpur, Alumni Coordinator for Bosnia and Herzegovina

On Wednesday, October 1, 2013, on behalf of the YES alumni and YES Abroad participants in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Etienne Grenierm, YES Abroad ’14, and I delivered books and school supplies to the Bjelave Orphanage library in Sarajevo.

After hearing about a call for a book drive, organized by the Linguists Association in Sarajevo organized in order to help enrich the book collection at the orphanage library, the American Councils Office in Sarajevo decided to make an open call about this activity as well and help.

The book drive was open to everyone, and after spreading the word using the office’s social media networks, the number of people joining our community service project skyrocketed. Within a couple of days, our pile of books significantly increased thanks to donations from YES alumni, the local community, local libraries, YES Abroad students, and even donations from abroad.

Upon our visit to deliver these books, Etienne and I got to meet some of the children at the orphanage who will benefit from having a richer book collection at their library. We believe that this book drive was a very successful project, as it shows how easy it is to engage the local community to benefit those in need.

The total amount of books that we received surpassed 100, and we were also able to donate school supplies as well. We would like to thank all of those that assisted us in this project.