Earlier this month, we received an AWESOME donation of 324 new holiday books from OKI International’s Cypress office, who held the most amazing and thoughtfully planned book drive ever! To launch the book drive, OKI employees were invited to their conference room, where they (1) found out which Christmas book team they were on (e.g., The Polar Express, The Night Before Christmas, The Christmas Carol, etc); (2) selected paper tags with book titles and images that were hanging around the room in order to commit to purchase specific titles; (3) learned about OKI’s incentives (e.g., a luncheon for the team with the most books, raffle tickets for luncheon opportunities for every team that donates at least 40 books, additional raffle tickets for every employee who donates 3+ books with opportunities to win $100 prizes); and (4) received milk and cookies! All six teams met the 40 book goal, and as a whole, their system of printing book title tags helped to ensure the best variety across all book types. THANK YOU to OKI employees for your participation and donations, and for contributing significantly to the hundreds of books we’ve given to hospitalized kids over the last couple weeks. And a huge thank you to Kayla Dang and Beth Ferrari for all your work to organize this impressive effort! Finally, thank you Rose Vu for taking this on and getting the ball rolling!

We have found that book drives that include friendly competition tend to be the most successful — what an amazing model this provides! ECBC needs more businesses like OKI!