Cannock Soroptimists enjoy summer book campaign success
Research shows that reading for pleasure can do many things: promote better health and wellbeing, help to build social connections and relationships with others and of course, aid learning. Children’s reading for pleasure is threatened … as many children do not have books of their own; there are many reasons for this.
For the last 5 years Cannock Soroptimists have been actively supporting Rotary Books4Home. This is a project run by Rotary Alumni 1210 working throughout Staffordshire, Shropshire and The Black Country. Rotary Books4Home works with schools to gift pre-read books to children. The youngsters choose a book, take it home, read it, enjoy sharing with their family and friends and many for the first time get to keep a book of their very own forever.
From time to time, the Soroptimists run a community campaign in order to boost the stock held by Books4Home and they are always overwhelmed by the generosity shown.
This campaign has been no different – over the two weeks in July children sorted through their books, deciding which they no longer needed and which could be donated to other children – sharing the pleasure of reading a book. Many schools going through their libraries at the end of term saved books no longer needed for Soroptimists to collect; Libraries and Hair Salons had donation boxes.
Once all of the books were collected, Soroptimists sorted and labelled them according to type – fiction, non-fiction, hard back, paperback etc and then delivered them to the RB4H Team so that they can begin to prepare for the requests coming in before the start of a new term.
Cannock Soroptimists and Rotary Books4Home were absolutely delighted at the donation of 4,116 pre-loved children’s books.
More children in Staffordshire, Shropshire and West Midlands will now have the opportunity to read, enjoy and own books – to everyone who donated a book - thank you!
If you would like to find out more about how Soroptimists support women and girls, please visit their Facebook page: facebook.com/SICannock or their website: sigbi.org/cannock-and-district To find out more about Rotary Books4Home rotaryalumni1210.co.uk/rotary-books4home
