Do you know what 250,000 books look like? Last week was my first National Book Bank distribution with First Book in Jessup, Maryland. The mission: to coordinate and distribute a quarter of million books to more than 200 recipient groups located across the country over the course of 4 days.

It was definitely a challenging task, especially given the sheer number of book titles, recipient groups, shipping addresses and logistics. However, with the help of our excellent team of volunteers from ING and the US Department of Education we completed our mission ahead of schedule!

Thanks to the extraordinary work of these volunteer teams, the books were sorted, shipped and loaded into the recipient group vans, cars, pick-up trucks from near and far – one group even drove a minivan all the way from New Jersey to pick up books!

Thank you to each and every volunteer for your hard work at the distribution in Maryland as well as across the country! We couldn’t do our work without you!

By the way, 250,000 books would cover the surface area of almost two whole football fields!