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ASU students donate books
Eugene Scott, The Arizona Republic
March 3, 2007

*Article reprinted with permission from the Arizona Republic.*

Arizona State University students are donating a library to Sunshine Residential and Group Homes Inc. on Saturday. The Leadership Scholarship Program at ASU held a book drive for the organization, which has more than 20 locations in the Valley. Sunshine provides housing for youths 4 to 18 who have been abused, abandoned or neglected. ASU's leadership students take a course each fall about leadership that they implement into a service project in the spring. This year the students also built shelves and developed a system that will allow kids to check out books from Sunshine's Glendale headquarters. "We had a whole list of possible projects we wanted to do, so we decided we wanted to work with kids," said ASU student Toby Phillips, who coordinated the drive. Given the students' heavy emphasis on academics, they thought it was fitting to do a project with an education emphasis. More than 25 students will read and play games with more than 200 children and teenagers from group homes Saturday. "This gives them a positive example to see someone who loves to read and is now in college. It gives them that hands on experience with people in the community and ideas that they can grow up with," said Ashlee Branam, assistant program manager at Sunshine. The students collected about 1,400 books and have been promoting the drive to residents and campus groups since before winter break. To donate books or money for the Sunshine library, contact Toby Phillips at Toby.Phillips@asu.edu.

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