Eclectic Red Barn: Supporting Operation Smile

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Supporting Operation Smile

As you may already know I am a retired college professor and between my husband and I we have 6 college graduates and several grandchildren who are nearing college age. As a parent and professor I was constantly reminded of the huge cost that students incur when buying their text books. If any of you are parents or even students, I’m sure you can relate. Well, for a nominal advertising fee I have been asked to endorse a program being offered by CampusBookRentals and I have agreed. This post was written by me and all opinions are 100% mine.

While they have an excellent web site and there are great advantages to renting from them;

such as
- saving 40-90% off of bookstore prices

- free shipping both ways

- allowing you to highlight in the textbook

- and flexible renting periods,

I want to focus on two items of note. The first and very important is that they partner with Operation Smile.
Operation Smile performs life changing cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities on children whose families could not otherwise afford it. The long term improvement in quality of life for the children that receive these surgeries is almost incomprehensible. Campus Book Rentals mission for this year is to donate over 1,000 life saving cleft lip surgeries to children in need. They will accomplish this by donating to Operation Smile with each textbook rented.

Here is Diagam, who benefited from the work of Operation Smile:

Source: Operation Smile

The second, is that they have a very interesting option to selling your used books – they will rent your books to other students allowing you to make money in the process. The process works like this: you return your books and they rent them to another student - you get paid. You will continue to get paid each time that the book is rented out as long as it is still in demand. You can learn more about this process with this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX5MAjkqwos

While this is a paid advertisement for Campus Book Rentals, I do believe that they are an excellent textbook option for today’s college students and parents. So if you have students heading off to college this fall or you know of any college students, you might want to check them out.