Darien BOok Aid

 All are welcome, including students, senior citizens, and busy professionals looking to volunteer at a great organization.

 Volunteer opportunities include:

• Selecting books and packing boxes for shipping. 
• Sorting and shelving donated books.
• Assisting the shipping chairperson.
• Assisting with fundraising or publicity.

Volunteers  can work multiple times per week or once a month, depending on your  availability.  Many books can be sorted in one hour.  It takes  approximately two hours to select and pack an order.

Click 'Contact Us' on the side bar to find out more or set up your first volunteer session!

 Darien Book Aid is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization that improves literacy and education worldwide and builds a foundation of peace, understanding and friendship through the free distribution of books. Darien Book Aid sends hand-selected books in response to specific requests from Peace Corps Volunteers, libraries and schools all over the world. We also donate books domestically to US organizations in need including schools, libraries, prisons, hospitals and Native American groups. 

 We are happy to consider requests for books from schools, libraries, community centers, non-profit literacy programs and health organizations where the books will be used by a large number of readers. If you would like to submit a request, please send an e-mail to darienbookaid@yahoo.com. Please include the following information:   

1. The name of your organization and the type of education or services you offer.   
2. The ages and reading levels of the intended readers.   
3. The number and ethnicities of the intended readers.   
4. The types of books that would best fill your needs – textbooks (which subjects?), reference, fiction (which genres – teen lit, pre-school, classics, fantasy sci-fi, picture books, etc. ?) non-fiction (which genres – biography, sports, geography, history, self-help, motivational, etc.?).  Please be as specific as possible to help us in our book selection.
5. Your mailing address exactly as it should appear on our mailing label.   
6. We ship via Media Mail, which can take 2-3 weeks to arrive. Requestors from the Connecticut region have the option to visit us in Darien and choose titles – by appointment only. 

If you would like to request a box of books, please write a letter (preferably by email, but also accepted via standard postal mail), telling us about your work, your students (if you are a teacher) and how you intend to use the books. When using email, put your letter in the body of an email, not as an attachment, to Peggy Minnis at BookAid@aol.com.                  

In order to arrange a books shipment, Darien Book Aid needs to know the following:  

1. That you are a PCV, with a paragraph or two about your work and book needs 

2. Your COS date 

3. The ages of your students, if the books are intended for student use  

4. The US grade reading equivalent of your readers  

5. Your mailing address, in English.  If you use non-Roman characters, be sure to include that version of your address.  

6. Your phone number there.  We need to put this on the label.  

7. The types of books you would find most useful.  

We normally send between twenty and thirty pounds of books, so keep that in mind when you create your wish list.  In order for our volunteers to take an interest in filling your request, it helps to provide them with that initial paragraph or two about you and your work.  They like to know who you are, where you are and what you are doing.  Good writing always pays off with a more accurate filling of your order.  This does not have to be an essay, just a couple of paragraphs.  Once that information is received, the request will created for our volunteers to fulfil. Remember that Book Aid is an all-volunteer organization, so the speed of our response to your request depends upon the generosity of our volunteers and books donors.    

If you are sending a request by regular mail, send it to:

Peggy MinnisPeace Corps DeskDarien Book Aid Plan, Inc.1926 Post RoadDarien, Connecticut  06820 USA

Overseas shipments go via the most cost effective method available at that time and can take between three weeks and three months. The packages are stamped  "Used Books, No Value," so there should not be a problem with customs.    Book Aid normally sends about 25 pounds of books, so send the list in the order of priority.  If you absolutely need only a class set of a book, tell us the genre you want since we can seldom supply an exact title. It takes up to 6 months to receive your order.  

If you would like the teachers at your school to request the books themselves, please have them e-mail Kitty Graves at   DarienBookAid.International@gmail.com  

 We are happy to consider requests for a box of books from schools, libraries, and community centers where the books will be used by a large number of learners. If you would like to request a box of books, please send an email to DarienBookAid.International@gmail.com.    ​Because of severe financial constraints and the ever rising cost of shipping, we are only able to send a small box of books weighing 10-12 kilos for each qualifying request. Keep that in mind as you provide the following information in the body of your email. (We do not open attachments.) 

Please include this information:   

1. The name of your institution and the type of education or services you offer     2. The ages of the people who are the intended readers      

3. The English reading level of the intended readers – beginning, intermediate or advanced       

4. The types of books that would best fill your needs – textbooks  (please indicate the specific subject and level preferred), reference books, story books, fiction, non-fiction etc. (Please be as specific as possible. We want to fill your needs as closely as we can.) ​ 

5. Your mailing address and phone number in the exact form it should appear on our mailing label. We cannot fulfill your request if you do not provide a phone number.   If you are writing from Ukraine, your address must include the phone number, postal code and the physical address to which the box will be delivered.    If your mailing address is in the Cyrillic alphabet, and mail can only reach you if it is written in Cyrillic, please include your address in both the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets in your email.