Turning the Page
Many of you can look around your home and see dozens of books, some adorning shelves like trophies. If you have children, you’ve likely been buying them books since before they could read for themselves. Not every child has that privilege.
Organization brightens children’s lives with books
Many of you can look around your home and see dozens of books, some adorning shelves like trophies. If you have children, you’ve likely been buying them books since before they could read for themselves. Not every child has that privilege.
“You don’t realize that for some a book is a luxury item,” says Colleen Ludington, co-founder of First Book-Charlotte, the local chapter of the international nonprofit organization that provides new books to children from low-income families.
Ludington moved to Charlotte in 2004 from Orlando. Several years earlier she worked as a volunteer with underprivileged children in Nashville. Those experiences led to her writing a children’s book, What I Like About You, in 2004, and she wanted to find a charity to donate the royalties to.
“I found out about First Book by Googling online,” she says. “After looking at the programs they serve and how they give their money away, it just seemed like a no-brainer.” In January of last year, Ludington and Erin McClure, a literary facilitator at Pinewood Elementary, launched First Book-Charlotte.
The all-volunteer organization (“There are no salaries, no buildings, no overhead,” Ludington says proudly) raises funds—it hosted a gala in May and raised more than $50,000—and awards grants to local charities who then order books through First Book’s national catalog. In June, First Book-Charlotte awarded year-long grants to several organizations including A Child’s Place of Charlotte, Inc. and the Starfish Academy Afterschool Program.
Last year, Charlotte was a host city for a First Book National Book Bank distribution. The Charlotte team secured free warehouse space and distributed 250,000 books during a three-day period. “We had people driving in from everywhere.”
Ludington believes that giving a child a book goes further than just the story being told. “That child takes that book home and shares it with a sibling or parent, and it starts to change the culture of reading in that family.”
To learn more about First Book-Charlotte, visit www.firstbookcharlotte.org . —J. H.
