Students in Seminole County participated in the Future Educators of America book drive from Jan. 10 to Feb. 28. The charity was designed as a local drive to benefit Housing Outreach Prevention Education, an organization based in Oviedo, that helps homeless families.

HOPE educates homeless children and provides food and clothing to the families, but they did not have books to provide. So FEA decided that something easy for the whole school to participate in was to donate books. Those books are gently used or new, and had to be K-12 appropriate.

Students dropped books off in the media center or front office, and over 30 boxes of books were donated so far, which beats the two boxes that HOPE got last year with the same drive.

“Last year, the families were very grateful for getting the books because the kids picked books that belong to them,” media director Po Dickison said.

If students donated five books, they got a Huey Magoos buy-one-get-one free voucher. FEA worked through Huey Magoos.

FEA also worked with the director of H.O.P.E to coordinate their efforts and get the program a lot of advertisement to increase the amount of books donated.

“The whole effort is incredible and we are extremely overwhelmed with everyone’s generosity,” Dickison said.