14-Year-Old's Eagle Project Brings In Thousands of Donated Books

According to Scouting Magazine, though the rank of Eagle Scout came about in 1911, the requirement to fulfill a service project was only added to the list of requirements in order to achieve Eagle Scout status in 1965, and the additional stipulation of “giving leadership to others” was added in 1972.

Since then, achieving the rank of Eagle Scout has been considered even more of a challenge and seen as increasingly impressive in a day and age where high school students are often over-extended and unable to fully commit to any one activity; in fact, today fewer than ten percent of Boy Scouts achieve the rank of Eagle Scout.

All of this makes it even more impressive that 14-year-old Fenwick freshman and Western Springs resident Drew Buinauskas is on the verge of becoming an Eagle Scout, a rank more commonly achieved around the age of 17.

Buinauskas is at the service project stage of completing the requirements of becoming an Eagle Scout, and the project that he has been dedicated to since last winter is planning and collecting books for Open Book.

“They get donated books, sell them in a bookstore, give some away, then they use all the money they get from selling the books to fund pro-literacy programs," explained Buinauskas of the non-profit.

Book collection, which ended September 30, lasted three weeks and has led to Buinauskas collecting over a thousand children's books, not to mention an uncounted amount of other fiction and nonfiction books.

Buinauskas worked with business owners and managers throughout Western Springs and surrounding suburbs who allowed him to place collection boxes in their places of business, which include , , , , Colonial Barber Shop, , and .

In addition to the generosity of local business managers, the patrons of local businesses have been remarkably charitable to Buinauskas' project.

“Every time we empty a box, the box fills up the next day. It’s just an amazing contribution from Western Springs [and the surrounding areas],” said Cathy Buinauskas, Buinauskas' mother.

The next step for Buinauskas is to finish documenting his experience in completing his project.

“I have to say that I learned perseverance, to keep my momentum going...It made me a more persistent person,” Buinauskas shared.

Once he achieves Eagle Scout rank, Buinauskas explained, his goal is to keep working at learning new skills through the merit badge system, and to stay involved by working with younger scouts.

Cathy Buinauskas explained that working with younger scouts, like the helpers Buinauskas has had on his service project, is one of the great things about learning leadership skills through the Eagle Scout project, "How do you make this all work? You need people under you to help and lead, you can't just do it all yourself."