Fighting to Bring Literacy to the World

Two Students Understood the Value of Giving A Book and with Notre Dame’s Help, Better World Books Was Born. 

For hundreds of millions of people around the world, books are rare, precious commodities. At the same time, upward of a billion of them go to waste as they’re thrown out and end up in landfills.

As Notre Dame undergraduates, Xavier Helgesen and Christopher Fuchs set out to solve this quandary by collecting unwanted used books and selling them online, creating a successful business with a mission to promote literacy and sustainability.

Established with the help of seed money from Notre Dame’s Social Venture Plan Competition, their company, Better World Books, has sold or recycled more than 90 million books and contributed over $12 million for literacy initiatives in the United States and around the world.