Free textbook giveaway this Sunday

SINGAPORE - Members of the public are invited to collect free secondhand textbooks from four distribution centres this Sunday. The distribution centres are Changkat Changi Secondary School, Gan Eng Seng School, Yio Chu Kang Secondary School and West Spring Secondary School.

The books available for collection include primary school to tertiary level textbooks, storybooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias and assessments books.

Book collection will be from 9am to 3pm.

The initiative is part of the FairPrice Share-A-Textbook Project, which gathers unwanted textbooks and distributes them to their new owners to promote the values of caring, sharing and recycling. The project also helps students save on their textbook expenses.

The project met and exceeded its target of 385,000 textbooks this round – the highest in 31 years, since the project was launched in 1983.

Some 20,000 students were registered under the priority scheme this year - an increase of about 10 per cent from last year. These priority students are entitled to select their books a day earlier than the general public.

Mr Seah Kian Peng, CEO, NTUC FairPrice, said: "We are very thankful for the support from the community who have come together to generously donate textbooks, especially when we made a call for more textbooks to be donated two weeks ago. This year, we also worked with ExxonMobil to make it even more convenient for the public to donate at Esso service stations.

"Over these 31 years, we owe the continued success of the FairPrice Share-A-Textbook Project to members of the public, supporting partners and volunteers."

yamadak@sph.com.sg