What’s the best thing to put in a kid’s backpack just as summer is beginning? How about storybooks to take home for keeps?
One day last week, the Houston County Friends of the Library, the Houston County Certifed Literate Community Program, the Warner Robins T.J. Maxx Store and Kohls were all involved in a project bound to bring smiles to faces of children from disadvantaged families and encourage a love of books. It all got started when Christine Hoskins of the Friends of Library had a talk on radio with Joe Bishop, who does double-duty as news director for Georgia Eagle Broadcasting and coordinator of the CLPCP.
That’s when Hoskins pointed out that the Friends of the Library were likely to have children’s books leftover from their big annual sale, and offered to donate the books to the literacy program.
Bishop then brainstormed with Dorothy Ferguson, who chairs the literacy program at Middle Georgia Technical College, about how to distribute the books, and got in touch with Debbie Stephens, who is director of Cherished Children, a preschool with plenty of kids in need of books.
As it turned out, somebody else had been thinking of Cherished Children. The T.J. Maxx store had just donated 100 school style backpacks to the store and those backpacks were waiting to be filled with books.
The next step was to pick up the storybooks from the Friends of the Library –more than 1,000 books in 32 large boxes.
Bishop handled the transportation, volunteers from Kohls helped with stuffing the backpacks.
The first 20 backpacks were given to children graduating from the program, and the remaining 80 will be given out in the months ahead.
