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Reading Partnership Gifts Gresham Park Students New Books
By the end of the school year, students at Gresham Park will have taken home three brand new books to add to their personal collections. The books come courtesy of Communities in Schools of Atlanta, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) and Macy’s.
On Thursday, September 24, 2009, the three organizations hosted a special event to symbolize their partnership in providing 22,000 new books to more than 6,700 young people in its Atlanta and DeKalb County partner schools this year.
Macy’s is a major supporter of RIF and runs the dynamic Book a Brighter Future Campaign each year to generate funding for RIF and its local programs. The support of Macy’s enabled Communities In Schools (CIS) of Atlanta to expand its RIF program to an additional 1,700 young people during the current school year. Because Gresham Park Elementary is a CIS of Atlanta RIF site this year Macy’s Executives from around the country, local Macy’s associates, CIS of Atlanta staff and RIF staff hosted a story time event at the elementary school.
Not only did the executives read to the students, they unveiled a check in the amount of $6,535,095.64. The check presentation represented the total amount of funds donated to RIF and local programs through this year’s Macy’s Book A Brighter Future Campaign.
“This is a huge program that Macy’s does each year to support Reading Is Fundamental nationally. This year it raised more than six million dollars to support the program and it allows us to give out new books to children in our partner schools in Atlanta and DeKalb and nationally billions of children will be able to get books through the Book a Brighter Future Campaign,” said J. Amisha Harding, Director of Development & Communications for CIS of Atlanta
Each student at Gresham will receive three new books to build their home libraries through CIS of Atlanta’s RIF program in 2009-10. Gresham Park Elementary School will also be presented with a special collection of hardcover, multicultural books during the event.
“Books are so needed at Gresham because a lot of our children really don’t have books at home,” said Principal Lucille Sharper. “So we are trying to expose our children to as much reading as possible. Of course the more reading we expose them to, the better students they become and that’s our goal at Gresham, to educate every child to his or her fullest.”
Communities In Schools of Atlanta is Metropolitan Atlanta’s leading dropout prevention organization and is proud to be the largest Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) program in the state of Georgia. Reading Is Fundamental is the country’s largest and oldest literacy program providing new books to young people in need.
“Macy’s philosophy has always been to give back to our communities and when we say our communities, that means it’s our entire community. That means it’s the folks that work for us; it’s the folks who shop and it’s also the members of their families. And guess who are members of their families? Kids, our future,” said Ruth Hamilton, Macy’s Southeast Region Cause Marketing Manager. |
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