Tucson Rotary Brings Books to Children

Monday, 07 December 2009 18:49

“This was our 19^th year making the trip and our largest group thus far,” Peth said.

The bus left December 4 and returned the morning of December 7.

“Last December we had 45 members and guests make the trip to San Carlos,” Peth said. “We gave San Carlos, Mexico its first library and its first stack of books.

“Our focus for the trip this year was increasing the books in the library, thanks in big part from the help of Reading Seed,” Peth explained.

Another project that the Rotary Club of Tucson started on this trip was a water well in the village of La Manga, near the school and library.

Between last year's completed library and the addition of all the new books and material, the school in San Carlos is beginning to affect the children in San Carlos.

"Besides adding more books each year, we always like to have another side project that we will work on throughout the year, like the water well project," Peth said.

“This year we donated about 1,000 children’s books,” said Elizabeth Campbell, the Reading Seed Executive Coordinator. “We’ve donated the past four years to the San Carlos project and we know it is great that Rotary does this. That’s why we are involved and support their project each year.”

The Reading Seed contributes to the Rotary San Carlos project by giving children the chance to be able to read many popular children's books from the last two decades.

“Our library consists of about 5,000 plus used books that have been donated, so donating 1,000 is the least we can do for Rotary,” Campbell said. “What we do at Reading Seed is different than Rotary because we aid students in learning how to read and learning to read to their appropriate grade level. The volunteers act as coaches to the students.”

Reading Seed cycles through hundreds of used books during a weeks time, giving them to various elementary schools around Tucson that are a part of the Reading Seed program. "Setting aside 12 to 15 boxes of books for rotary each December isn't too difficult for us," said Campbell.

At Reading Seed, thousands of books come into their office from various donors and there are volunteers that come in several days a week and clean and wipe down the books. "We, as a team, go through to see if they are usable to provide to our schools and other causes we have for Reading Seed," Campbell said.

“Reading Seed helps make our project at Rotary very special because of all the books they donate for our trip,” Peth explained. “The school is so thankful each year when we arrive and seeing the faces of the children when they see the new books is priceless.”

Written by Grant Becker You are reading Tucson Rotary Brings Books to Children articles