Written by Denise Gary
Alert! Lovers of all things literate, we have been given the opportunity to participate in another cash giveaway. We did great in the Christie Cookies $25,000 giveaway, but now the stakes are much higher. For a kind supporter has nominated us in the Chase Community Giving 5 Million Dollar giveaway.
The beauty of this Facebook voting crusade is that every charity in the top 100 will receive $25,000! Every one of them! After that, there will be a vote-off for the top prizes, which are $1M for the charity with the most votes and $100,000 each for the five runner’s up.
Kids Need to Read managed to get into the top 50 when our co-founder Nathan Fillion tweeted the Christie Cookie contest. We won $100 and a tin of fabulous cookies. With this campaign, we only need to get into the top 100 to win $25,000!
If you have a Facebook account, please fan, vote, tweet and spread the word any way you can! Voting for the top 100 ends Dec. 11th, 2009.
This is what we are fighting for:
(Excerpts from the application of a middle school teacher in Sunnyvale, California) I am a special education teacher. The school has a library, but most of the books are too difficult for my students to read. I would like to be able to buy some high-interest books written at 3rd and 4th grade level. The library is more interested in buying books written at middle school grade levels, and there is very little available that my students can read. The district as a whole may have money for books, but it has not trickled down to the special education department in the three years I’ve worked here with one exception: once the woman teaching English language learners and I were able to buy 25 paperbacks from a educational publisher that specializes in high interest readers written for students who read below grade level. These books were placed in the school library.
I would like some books for the class library. I will make them available to all the special day class and special education students and their teachers. We will rotate books through our classrooms. Right now the only classroom books I have are books that were withdrawn from circulation at local libraries; 20 paperbacks donated by a family whose daughters had outgrown them; some pretty sad looking, beaten up books another teacher left behind; and books I [purchased] with my own money, usually second hand. The kids get VERY EXCITED about new books!
Kids Need to Read is going to take care of these children who are being ignored by the school district that is supposed to be providing for their educational needs.
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