Members of public encouraged to donate textbooks at 152 donation points across all FairPrice, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra Hypermarkets, FairPrice Xpress and Warehouse Club stores

A survey commissioned by FairPrice has found that the scheme continues to be beneficial to low-income families and that it enjoys positive sentiment

SINGAPORE, 16 November 2015 – NTUC FairPrice (FairPrice) today launched its annual Share-A-Textbook project, which is in its 33rd year. Through the scheme, the public are invited to contribute their used textbooks for recycling across 152 donation points islandwide. FairPrice aims to collect 400,000 school textbooks to benefit less fortunate students this year. The project has collected over 3.5 million books since 1983, which is equivalent of circling Singapore’s coastline 5.4 times, when laid out end to end^[1].

Mr Seah Kian Peng, CEO (Singapore), NTUC FairPrice, said, “FairPrice Share-A-Textbook project returns for the 33rd year to help low-income families alleviate their financial burdens as we do our part to provide these yearly necessities. We owe the success of this community project to the generous support from kind donors, volunteers and community partners over the years, and appeal to the public to continue giving their textbooks toward this scheme to help those in need and to conserve resources for the environment.”

FairPrice has partnered with volunteer welfare organisations (VWOs) and Community Development Councils (CDCs) to shortlist names of students from low-income families who will be given priority to collect textbooks before the general public is invited to take their pick. About 20,000 students between the ages of 7 to 16 years have been registered under this priority scheme.

A survey of 600 parents commissioned by FairPrice this year shows that Share-A Textbook continues to meet the needs of the community. Key findings saw 84 per cent of low-income respondents agreeing that the scheme was a good way to encourage their children to be thrifty. Perceptions toward receiving used textbooks were also positive, with almost nine in 10 agreeing that there is no stigma in using pre-owned textbooks and they would not feel embarrassed using them. Ninety-seven per cent also agreed that they would recommend the scheme to someone who needs it.

Members of the public can donate used textbooks at 152 FairPrice supermarkets, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra, FairPrice Xpress outlets at Esso service stations and Warehouse Club from today till 6 December 2015.

Involvement from the community

Some 400 volunteers from over 170 supporting partners and FairPrice staff will come together to help bring the Share-A-Textbook to fruition this year. Volunteers will assist in areas such as logistics, promotion, and mass community collection, sorting and distribution of the textbooks. They are expected to contribute about 3,200 worth of man-hours to the project.

Gan Eng Seng School and Yio Chu Kang Secondary School have come on board as community partners, and these two locations along with FairPrice’s own Warehouse Club will serve as distribution centres. Staff from the two schools, as well as FairPrice’s staff will assist in sorting and distributing the textbooks. The public distribution day will be on 13 December 2015 at these three locations.

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^[1] Coastline of Singapore: 193km. Estimated size of textbook is A4 size (29.7cm). Total length of 3.5 million textbooks is 1,039.5km, which equates to 5.38 times round Singapore.