I love being able to share the gift of reading and being able to direct my donation to those who need it most is so gratifying. As part of the #NickCFK Big Help Book Drive, I was able to shop at my local Walmart for some great books (check out the whole shop album here) and as soon as I heard about this Champions For Kids Simple Project, I knew that shopping for The Teacher’s Supply Closet would allow me to make a great donation impact! What I didn’t know when I planned my shop and book drive is that my donations would be needed even more! This was the scene at the Teacher’s Supply Closet outlet just two weeks ago:
After a particularly nasty rain, the sky was literally falling in their little world! Fortunately it was during the day while people were in the outlet and they were able to quickly cover the majority of the supplies before the flooding got too bad, but there was still significant damage to paper goods and some of the other supplies.
While speaking to the chief operating officer, Deborah Halon today when I did my drop off, she said that the community has really rallied behind them since the disaster, and other than some ceiling tiles that still need replacing and a faintly musty smell in the carpets that will hopefully come out in the next few days and they are on schedule to start supplying 300 teachers in the neediest schools in the tri-county area with almost everything on their wishlists!
On top of the collection of fabulous Nickelodeon books I was able to find at Walmart and the others I picked up to round out my donation, my children, friends and neighbors also contributed so that we were able to drop off over 30 books today - including some that were bilingual Spanish and English, some classic chapter books, some non-fiction and some great picture books! Check them out:
And they were so pleased to be getting such a great group of books!
One of the bonuses for the Teacher's Supply Closet is that they have a fabulous volunteer who takes all of the book donations and sorts them by grade and reading level so that when teachers come to browse the selection they can pinpoint exactly what they need for their students to help motivate them to READ!!! These books and the school supplies that I was also able to collect will go a long way to helping out children who are most in need. The schools who participate in the Teacher's Supply Closet have 88% or more of their students on free or reduced lunch and the saddest thing is that there are 34 schools that qualify...
Getting this project off the ground was incredibly simple! All it took was a few well placed Facebook posts and a couple of phone calls and everyone was on board! Please consider checking out Champions for Kids at http://championsforkids.org and find out what you can do to make this simple service project work in your community! You can also follow the Champions for Kids Twitter Handle https://twitter.com/#!/champions4kids and Champions for Kids Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ChampionsForKids
You can also keep up with Nickelodeon on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nickelodeon and Nickelodeon on Twitter @nickelodeontv https://twitter.com/#!/search/nickelodeon
“I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Champions for Kids. #NickCFK #CBias All opinions are my own.
