Our friends and partners at Book Harvest need your help! Thanks to United Way of the Greater Triangle, they have a chance to add 10,000 books to their supply of books for children to enjoy over the summer as part of the Books on Break program.
Books on Break is an effort to combat summer learning loss. Thanks to donations and volunteers, Book Harvest provides a new string backpack and 10 self-selected books to elementary school students on free or reduced lunch. These books are theirs to keep forever and will help then retain their academic skills over the long weeks of summer.
At the end of each school year, many students in our community face a summer without books and academic enrichment. This leads to students losing two months or more of reading skills. Access to books, especially books students choose for themselves, has been shown to stop this decline in reading skills.
In 2016, Books on Break provided books at the start of summer to 9,057 students from 26 elementary schools in four school districts, including Durham! This year, rising kindergartners at 6 of our Transition to Kindergarten Transition Team schools will have a chance to participate in the Books on Break program.
How can you help?
Volunteers are needed to help transport 10,000 books from Raleigh to Durham. Drivers will meet at a warehouse in Raleigh (2728 Capital Blvd., Suite 101, Raleigh, 27604) and move them to the Book Harvest Warehouse (706 Ellis Road, Durham, 27703), where volunteers are also needed to help unload cars. Please use this link to sign up to help more children have books to read this summer!
