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Last week was a big one for us.

Part of a strategic plan in the works for over a year – we finally got to announce a major commitment to expand Books for Keeps into 14 additional elementary schools across Georgia over the next three years.

That commitment, formally announced at at meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Atlanta, allowed us to reprise an appearance at the CGI America meeting made by Melaney Smith, the Books for Keeps founder, in 2011. Oh, how we’ve grown since then! We nearly tripled our program, hired two full-time employees, and grew outside our little home community of Athens. We were honored that Melaney was invited back to present our commitment on stage during Day 2 of the CGI meeting, while Executive Director Leslie Hale represented Books for Keeps during the full two-day event.

Officially, finally, we could say it: by 2019, Books for Keeps will be serving 11,000 children annually all over Georgia – including every child attending a Clarke County elementary school. Five of those schools will be in Atlanta, and another three in rural Georgia counties, starting with Elberton. That’s 140,000 books given away annually.

While last week was big – appearing on a big stage, making a major announcement – much of the work lies ahead. We will triple our program reach over the next three years. That means going out and getting the community buy-in – from EVERY corner of the community – necessary to serve 7,000 new students at 14 new schools.

Can we do it? We sure can – but only with the help of people like you. Make a donation, make an introduction, sign up for our newsletter – or just spread the word.

Want to help, [...]

It’s that time of year when our hearts swell. It’s like Christmas, and we get to feel like Santa Claus, giving more than 45,000 books away to children all over Athens, Atlanta, and Warrenton.

Join us as we help children select and count their books and record their feedback on our book selection. This is the ultimate volunteer experience! Share in the joy of a Books for Keeps distribution by signing up to volunteer with us.

No special skills are required; training is provided in the first 10 minutes of each shift – so the most important requirement is to show up on time! Sign up for a shift via Community Connection at this link.

If you are part of a group that would like to adopt an entire shift (8 to 12 volunteers), please email Rachel Watkins to sign up: rachel@booksforkeeps.org. Available shifts will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. There is limited space in each shift, so please don’t delay!

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FOWLER DRIVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, ATHENS, GA
[Thursday, April 28, 2016: 7:55 a.m.-11:10 a.m. SHIFT FULL and 11:10 a.m.-2:10 p.m. BOTH SHIFTS FULL]
Friday, April 29, 2016: 7:45 a.m.-11:10 a.m. 

DOWNTOWN ACADEMY, ATHENS, GA
[Friday, April 29, 2016: 12:45 p.m.-2:30 p.m. SHIFT FULL]

GAINES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, ATHENS, GA
[Monday, May 2, 2016: 7:55 a.m.-11:40 a.m. and  12:15 p.m.-1:45 p.m. BOTH SHIFTS FULL]
[Tuesday, May 3, 2016: 8:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m. SHIFT FULL] and 11:50 a.m.-1:50 p.m. 

M.E. FREEMAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, WARRENTON, GA
Wednesday, May 4, 2016: 7:55 a.m.-10:35 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

BARNETT SHOALS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, ATHENS, GA
Thursday, May 5, 2016: [7:45 a.m.-10:30 a.m. SHIFT FULL] and 10:25 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
Friday, May 6, 2016: 8:05 a.m.-12:25 p.m. [and 12:25 p.m.-2:15 p.m. SHIFT FULL]

J.J. HARRIS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, ATHENS, GA
Monday, May 9, 2016: 8:45 a.m.-11:25 a.m. [and 11:30 a.m.-2:45 [...]

A guest post by Books for Keeps Board Treasurer Joe Hill

I remember when I first learned to love to read.  My father was stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC, and I was at Tabernacle Middle School in English class with our teacher Mrs. Hellmer.  There we learned to diagram sentences and if we could, we used all the adjectives in our spelling list to make unnecessarily long sentences which we would then have to diagram.  Mrs. Hellmer had a bookshelf full of fiction representing every genre and she would ask us to choose a book for recreational reading or a book report.  We had a library I suspect, but I don’t recall going there in middle school.  All I remember was her bookshelf and how because of it I discovered that reading was something that could be fun.

When it came time to choose my first book in middle school English, I remember thinking a book cover with dragons looked pretty cool.  So I started with Anne McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern.  I started with Dragonflight, then Dragonquest, The White Dragon, Dragonsong, Dragondrums and pored through most all of her Pern-based books.  My school was a little way out in Maysville and the bus ride with all the stops was at least a half hour. The long ride to school and home provided ample time to knock out a couple chapters.  I became a voracious reader in middle school due to the long bus ride and my access to that bookshelf.

These were the days of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Booksellers, where every mall had at least one bookstore.  Both the comic shop and the bookstores were within bike-riding distance for me.  After a slice of [...]

Big news today out of Books for Keeps!

The Books for Keeps Board of Directors and Executive Director Leslie Hale are thrilled to announce the hiring of Athens resident and lifelong literacy advocate Rachel Watkins.

Rachel will take on the role of program manager, the second position ever filled here at Books for Keeps. It’s an exciting move by our organization as we launch an expansion to reach 15 additional schools in the next three to five years. Rachel will start work with Books for Keeps in January.

Read more about our plans to grow here.

Rachel was born and raised in Mississippi and came to Athens to earn her master’s degree in adult education in the early 1990’s. She spent ten years in Monterey, California, before moving back home to Athens in 2005. Rachel has four children in the Clarke County School District and has worked part-time at Avid Bookshop since August of 2011. Her husband is a paramedic in West Africa with International S.O.S.

Rachel is well known in Athens as an education advocate, a communicator, a networker, and a cheerleader for our community. She brings to Books for Keeps extensive experience in education, event planning, writing, community outreach, and – of course – literacy.

Read our press release announcing Rachel’s hiring here.

What better way to Throwback Thursday than to start where it all began? One person, one thought, one opportunity to make a change.

This was all only an idea in 2009, when our founder, Melaney Smith, decided to take a leap of faith and tackle an issue that had been nagging at her heart. When Melaney saw one child’s simple desire for an education, there was no turning back. Read on, and click the links in this post to learn more about the step-by-step process that gave birth to Books for Keeps.

With no books at home, and no access to a public library, many children lose the opportunity to learn and build on their reading skills during summer. What’s more, Melaney realized many of those children would actually lose reading skills entirely. Seeing this, Melaney took action that lead to a vast change in the lives of children across the community.

The idea of Books For Keeps came to Melaney six years ago when her niece, MK, first joined a local mentor program. MK noticed that the children she was mentoring could not afford the materials required to make the most of their education. It all started when MK overheard a little girl say, “I wish I had a book at my house.”

Some would have chosen to observe the situation and say, “someone should do something about this.” Well, Melaney decided to be that person. She took the situation into her own hands and said, “I am somebody. I can do something.” As Melaney began to build on this thought in her personal blog posts, she sought advice and ideas. These ideas led to the creation of an organization that has provided 185,000 books to children [...]