Pages of Promise, a non-profit organization at Iowa State that began last semester, is working to collect used textbooks to send to schools in developing African countries.

The organization was started in the spring semester by Kevin Geiken, senior in performing arts, and Keegan Kautzky, senior in political science. It collected more than 11,000 used textbooks at Iowa State and shipped them to more than half of the countries in Africa, where in many schools, there is only one textbook per classroom.

“I was thinking that we would collect a couple of thousand books when we started this last semester, but we ended up collecting over 11,000,” Kautzky said.

When Kautzky lived in Africa for four months, working with a group of orphans who lived there, and Geiken worked with students in South Africa, they got to see first-hand the shortage of textbooks at the universities and secondary schools in Africa.

They decided there was something they should be doing to help out.

“It is amazing that we can take what is waste to us and rebuild a university in Africa,” Kautzky said.

Pages of Promise cannot afford to ship all of the books that are collected over to Africa.

Last semester, they paid out-of-pocket to send the books to the organization Books For Africa in St. Paul, Minn., which shipped the used books to Africa.

“Right now we are acting as a collection agency for Books for Africa,” Geiken said.

Last semester, Pages of Promise rented the biggest truck possible to transport more than 11,000 books to Books for Africa. This semester they are trying to get a semitrailer, because they’re expecting an even larger collection.

Books for Africa has been running for 20 years and recently shipped its 10 millionth book.

“I am glad to see that we can work together with Books for Africa instead of in competition,” Geiken said.

Any and all textbooks and reading books can be sent to Africa by Pages of Promise except for Bibles and religious material.

“New editions of textbooks are issued every three years,” Kautzky said.

“One-third of the textbooks each semester have no resale value, so it is nice to have the option of giving the books to Africa rather than throwing them away.”

Other private colleges and universities are becoming involved with Pages of Promise, including Simpson College in Indianola, St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn. and the University of Northern Iowa.

“We hope to have all of the private colleges and major universities in Iowa involved soon,” Kautzky said.

Other universities in Nebraska and Texas also want to get involved with Pages of Promise.

“We need to make sure that we have a good mechanism for transporting the books to Books for Africa before Pages of Promise can expand anymore,” said Geiken.

“Hopefully, we will have that by next year.”