Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Mentor BIG Book GiveAway

It only takes one book to lead to a lifetime love of reading! The Volunteer Center’s mentoring programs held their first Mentor BIG Book Giveaway on Saturday, April 25, and it was a roaring success. The idea behind the event was to promote literacy to families involved in our Volunteers in Protective Services and Mentoring Moms programs, which provide mentors, respectively, to children who have experienced abuse or neglect and to mothers in need of guidance in parenting and life skills. More than 3,000 new books were donated by Reader’s Digest, Hertz Corporation, Heritage Point of Teaneck, United Water, and Pearson Education.

"Lots of schools have book fairs," says Cindy Andrake, Mentoring Programs Supervisor, "But most of the families in our programs can't afford to purchase books. We were delighted to see book bags filled to overflowing and excited youngsters, adults and mentors chattering animatedly about books they couldn't wait to read."

“Children, some of them for the first time ever, got to spend as much time as they wanted picking out books that were important to them,” said Eva Tobias, VIPS Program Assistant.

The Mentor BIG Book Giveaway was sponsored by the Volunteer Center's Business Volunteer Council to promote family literacy.

What book got you hooked on reading?! Write us a comment and let us know.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first book I really remember reading was Charlotte's Web.

Melissa said...

For me it was a little book called Twilight, maybe you have heard of it. I read a ton in high school, then got to busy in college now I read all the time again and I love it.