A group of concerned citizens in Minnesota is launching a charitable book drive to benefit refugee children more than 1,000 miles away at the Mexican border. They say the venture was inspired by similar efforts spearheaded by indie bookstores such as Cherry Street Books (Minnesota), River Dog Books (Wisconsin), and hello hello books (Maine).

The two-month new book drive is called Books for Border Kids; it kicked off on September 1 and will end on October 31.

According to Betty Ray, a spokesperson for BBK, the group of Twin Cities residents who are friends—none of whom are book publishing professionals, and who do not wish to be identified by name—wanted to express in a productive way their concern over the plight of the refugees to the U.S. who are being detained at the Mexican border.

“As devoted readers, parents, and grandparents, we knew of many stories of children being sustained by books and the power of books to ignite the imagination and inspire a life,” Ray explained about the group’s motivations. “We decided to try to find a way to get books in the hands of refugee children at the border.” The group, she said, wanted to alleviate refugee children’s “sense of helplessness and despair about their safety and comfort” by providing “opportunities to learn and to develop a sense of home and place and a feeling of hope itself.”

Ray said that because both Red Balloon in St. Paul and Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis “provide high quality children’s books to our community,” the group selected them as partners in this endeavor “to highlight them, promote their mission, and support their continued independent presence” in the Twin Cities. Donors are thus asked to donate cash or purchase bilingual, Spanish, or Portuguese-language books for donation at either store.

The two bookstores are providing wish lists of recommended titles for customers to purchase both on their websites and in-store. The two indies are also shipping the books at their own expense to Denise Chávez, owner of Casa Camino Real Book Store & Art Gallery in Las Cruces, N.M., who curated the book wish lists and is coordinating the distribution to the intended recipients. Chávez has been organizing book drops to refugee families from Mexico and Central America for about a year; last January, Casa Camino Real officially launched a book drive, “Books for the Journey,” at Winter Institute in Albuquerque.

According to Ray, a librarian at a public library in a small northern Wisconsin town discovered Chávez while researching how people in the Upper Midwest region could best deliver money and books to refugee children detained at the Mexican border. “BBK wouldn’t have happened had it not been for [that] soon-to-retire substitute librarian at the desk at Washburn Public Library,” Ray said. “Fortunately, as a persistent researcher, she came across Chávez’s name and her bookstore.”

According to Chávez, she and her colleagues currently are distributing books at refugee service organization sites, as well at the border “hospitality centers,” and are even driving to Juárez, a Mexican border town where many refugees wait, hoping to enter the U.S.

Casa Camino Real has just launched its own fundraising drive to purchase a “libromobile” to facilitate these book distributions; to date, $1,000 has been raised of the $15,000 needed to buy and renovate the bookmobile Chávez has in mind.

Ray told PW that the BBK organizers hope that other groups of people will come together to “create their own initiative in whatever way works for them” to provide refugee families with books.

“Already, people in other communities who are interested in creating their own similar initiatives are contacting us,” Ray said. “We’re sharing our process, learning, and contacts. Denise Chávez has been a huge help to us, and will offer guidance and support to others. Our initiative ends on October 31, but we will do our best to extend our support to others with similar missions beyond that date.”