Therefore, I am thrilled and proud to announce that I am starting a Little Free Library in my college town. This is a nonprofit book exchange movement that is dedicated to promoting literacy, creating a free-learning environment for the public to enjoy, and to unify people through books. It is a great way to encourage or inspire people to read and to also allow bookworms to share their favorite pieces of literature. Most importantly, it will help raise awareness and enforce people to recognize the importance of extensive reading.
My professor, for my Technical Writing I class, asked students to brainstorm creative ideas on something that we would like to see changed or added on or off campus, for our project. As someone who enjoys reading, I thought a creative idea would be to install free book-swaps in the area. The main objective of the Little Free Library is to share a book, take a book and exchange a book.
There are approximately 40,000 free libraries in all 50 states in America as well as in 70 different countries around the world. The organization hopes to achieve their new goal of having 100,000 free libraries by 2017. These book exchanges greatly resemble to birdhouses or adorable dollhouses, in which you can customize and paint yourself--it can be purchased through the Little Free Library’s website.
Although book exchanges are a great way to discover new reading material for any community, low literacy continues to be a major problem among adults, not just for adolescents, in the United States. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) discovered that approximately 30 million adults have what is considered to be “below basic” literacy skills—with more than half of those scoring at that level do not have a high school diploma or a GED.
With hard work, perseverance, patience, extensive grant/proposal writing, and lots of Advil (the project has given me migraines) I successfully received funding from the Rotary Club and book donations from the Friends of the Public Library—it’s a nonprofit group that assists the local library with fundraising and advocacy.
I have been confronted with many obstacles in trying to establish a book-swap or two, therefore making this a bumpy journey for me, but I am glad that this idea of mine is turning into a reality! Currently, I am still waiting to hear back from Rotary, in regards to the check, but once I receive it I will finally be able to order the book exchange model of my choice, paint/customize it, and install it right in town—with the help of my classmates, professor, and volunteers.
Writing about it is making me feel more and more excited! I will definitely post updates, in regards to the project, and will share the finished masterpiece of the little library once it officially done. I am so thrilled to share and document my journey in implementing these wonderful book exchanges to the public--through this blog, and I hope that I will inspire any reader of this blog to start one. It is something that I strongly encourage; it is a fantastic way of building a sense of community while also advocating learning.
If anyone is interested in learning more about this nonprofit movement and organization, please check out the website: http://www.littlefreelibrary.org
x, Kayla
No comments