A brighter chapter of reading has been opened up for some Vernon students.
Mission Hill Elementary is one of 26 B.C. schools that participated in the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation and is a 2019 Adopt a School program recipient.
That resulted in 111 new books for Mission Hill, replacing some of the 20-year-old library books serving the more than 300 students.
“Our library collection has aged out of relevance after a number of years of stagnation,” the school states on its participation page.
“Recently, we have made great strides in providing students with reading material that they are excited to engage with, but we have a long way to go. We plan on using the money from this grant to fill our collection with updated picture books, graphic novels and novels that will get our student body excited about reading and to support our school literacy goals.”
The program is a commitment of $733,000 for books to Canadian high-need elementary schools. From Sept. 14 to Oct. 6, the Adopt a School program united the Foundation with Indigo, its customers and their communities to raise funds on behalf of local schools. This year’s program supported 182 schools across the country and will impact the lives of more than 100,000 Canadian children with the addition of thousands of new books and educational resources for their school libraries.
“It’s incredibly special to see how communities rallied together during the Adopt a School program with the shared goal of filling the shelves of their local school libraries,” said Rose Lipton, executive director of the Love of Reading Foundation.
“We know the power that one book can hold and believe that every child deserves the opportunity to fall in love with reading. We would like to thank everyone who generously supported this important cause; because of them, over 100,000 Canadian children will have access to new and engaging books.”
Those funds are used to update their libraries with new books and educational resources that are in desperate need. Schools are eligible for a 30 per cent discount on books at Indigo, Chapters and Coles stores when using program funds.
Mission Hill was adopted by Coles in the Village Green Centre.
New this year, in addition to in-store support, Indigo provided a free online registry platform to all adopted schools. Each school selected 50 books that they wanted to add to their school library and added them to a unique book gift registry on indigo.ca. When community supporters purchased these books, Indigo matched the donation with a second copy of each book, doubling the impact for the schools.
Since its inception, the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation has committed over $31 million for books to more than 3,000 school libraries across Canada, impacting more than one million Canadian children.
To learn more about the Foundation, visit loveofreading.org.
READ MORE: Dream funds serve up dream kitchen for Vernon organization
READ MORE: Vernon event inspires handmade holiday
@VernonNews
newsroom@vernonmorningstar.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.