In November 2015 Columbus High School senior David Sosa worked with his brother Stephen on a book drive to fill a library at the Harbour Island All Age School in the Bahamas.
“My family and I go to Harbour Island every year in the summer,” he said. “We saw the building being built. We asked the school administrators what was being built and it was a library.”
The administrators also indicated they were going to have problems filling the library with books.
“We decided, because we go to such a big private school, we should give back,” he said.
The brothers sent emails and texted friends to see if they had books they wanted to donate. Then, in November, they made the book drive an official school project.
The school counselors sent emails to all the students to tell them about the project.
“We got most of the books in those two weeks,” he said.
They sorted the books and discarded those that were in bad condition or inappropriate for use in a school. They shipped 18-20 large U-Haul boxes to the school in June.
“The shipping was free,” Sosa said. “SeaCor Island Lines, LLC donated the freight to us.”
When they returned to Harbour Island school officials presented them with certificates. They also learned that there was a problem with the building so the donated books were distributed throughout the school for classroom libraries.
“Since the library isn’t being built any more, they said that was enough [books],” He said. “The classroom libraries were all filled.”
David’s new goal is to gather some class sets of novels for whole group instruction.
At Columbus, Sosa is on the soccer team and in the Liga Contra el Cancer, also known as Cangrejos..
He plans to apply to the University of Florida, Florida International University, and Florida State University with the goal of getting into law school.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
