Spring Break
From ECU to Guyana
Professor goes on global textbook mission
Elise Phillips, Assistant Pulse Editor
Issue date: 6/4/08 Section: Features
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Guyana, located at the northern tip of South America; has only one university, the University of Guyana, for its nearly 800,000 citizens.
Deena, originally from Guyana, attended the University of Guyana for his undergraduate education and says that although the university produces brilliant citizens, the textbook situation there is heartbreaking.
"The book situation there is atrocious," said Deena. "Staff and faculty [at the university] do not have books."
Deena's project started last year when a fellow professor and friend at the University of Kentucky passed away, leaving Deena the rights to some 5,000 of his books. Deena took those books to Guyana in February of this year, and plans to take about 10,000 more to the country in late June or early July.
"We will take these books to the university's library and sometime later we will have a ceremony," Deena said.
About 15 volunteers of the project have been working for the past two weeks-packing and cataloguing the books-so that they will be ready for send off later on this month.
"ECU has an international and global mission to do good while at the same time helping in the community [of] Eastern North Carolina, the state and the world," said Deena. "I have traveled to all 50 countries [in South America] so this is dear to my heart."
Besides his work in Guyana, Deena has sponsored a book-giving campaign in Belize as well. In 2007, the 14-year Greenville resident took a group of students to open a free clinic in the country, but ended up giving 5,000 books to students at the University of Belize instead.
"We discovered that they were really bad off and didn't have any textbooks," Deena said.
The relationship that ECU has with Belize because of the international student exchange program has opened up the area for the book-giving project, said Deena.
"Even though this is my home, I'm glad to do my part to help humanity," Deena said. "I think books in these places is like bread to a hungry person, like light in the darkness."
Volunteers are needed this week from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Bate 2019 for data entry, book labeling and packaging for the project.
This writer can be contacted at editor@theeastcarolinian.com.
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