Book Me meets Book Out

Newark, NJ, August 2024— In February 2024, the Gamma Chapter held its 2nd annual Book Me: Book Drive. The Brick city gammas collected books for children and young adults in the community for the entire month.

The chapter started this initiative in 2022 and received tons of donations including some from one of the few surviving Black owned book stores in New Jersey, “Source of Knowledge”. The collected donations were gifted to Michelle Obama Elementary School and The Apostles’ House Shelter, servicing women and children and individuals or families at risk of homelessness in Newark and Essex County, New Jersey.

This year the chapter collected 100 books and ran into a few issues trying to find proper homes for the donations. Fortunately, the chapter connected with GalleryRetail, a prosocial creative agency providing a full line of creative services to artists and small businesses. The organization was doing its first annual “Book Out” event and decided that the chapter’s donation was best suited for its purpose.

Isaiah “Zay” Little, Creative Director & Founder of GalleryRetail and Newark First Fridays, said: “The Gamma Xi Phi (Gamma Chapter) donation of 100 books for our first annual BookOut is a small treasure trove, with titles spanning self-help, novels, teen literature, and children’s books. This generous contribution not only helps fill the shelves of our bookstore-community hub but also has the potential to profoundly impact the lives of emerging creatives and young readers. As a creative change maker, I seek access and opportunities for fellow troopers first through information sharing, thus the books, and eager to galvanize additional resources on the road to a physical space.”

Gamma Chapter Program Director Malcolm Minor said, “I believe we as a chapter will find a way to choose different partners and organizations to share our donations with every year. It’s pretty exciting to look for new ways we can find and make community with those who have never heard of us before.”