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MHS club donates books, cart to CHC
Members of the Marianas High School Pre-Med Club pose for a photo with the book cart they donated to the Commonwealth Health Center last Monday. (Kimberly A. Bautista)
The newly-formed Marianas High School Pre Med Club recently donated over 120 books to the Commonwealth Health Center’s pediatrics unit as part of the club’s outreach activities.
According to club president Catherine Byen, the club opted to donate a book cart as their first community outreach because it would greatly help the child patients at the pediatrics unit.
“A lot of children come to the pediatrics unit but they just stay there and they have no source of entertainment, so we thought it would be a great idea to donate some books that we have at the library so these books came from our school library, teachers, and students,” she said.
Although all the books were donations, Byen said the club still fundraised to order a new book cart on Amazon.
By working with the hospital through donations, club members are exposed to doctors they could possibly shadow, she added.
“We want this to be an opportunity for other doctors to recognize us and whenever we reach out for students that want shadowing opportunities, they would accept our students and have them participate,” she said.
Renea Raho, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.’s director of Nursing, said the book donation is the first CHC has received from a group of students.
“We have had other donations in the past. This is the first time from this group of students. We will give these books to the patients. If they want to read them or if they want to take them home, we could do that too,” she said.
Raho added that the pediatrics unit will share the books with the outpatient clinic so more children can read while they wait to be seen.
“From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank them for their donation. These books are precious and we really want the kids here to be exposed to reading instead of playing video games,” she said.
