Cops ‘n’ Kids Children’s Literacy Initiative is growing by leaps and bounds. We are currently serving four Pre-K Counts classrooms at Penn Valley, Manor, and Walt Disney in Pennsbury and Bright Beginners Academy in Bensalem. A team of volunteers reads to children, does a follow up activity and gives free books to children each month.
Our partnership with Bristol Borough is strong. We are participating in two family literacy nights called Partners in Print at Snyder Girotti Elementary in Bristol. We have distributed books to their food pantry so that children can visit the pantry to take food home for the weekend and pick up a book to add to their library at home.
We will be participating with 21st Century Community Learning Centers after school program for Dr. Seuss night in Morrisville on March 5. We have collected boxfuls of Dr. Seuss books over the last year to get into the hands of kids that day.
Jutta Saba is coordinating our distributions to food pantries. We are currently serving 10 food pantries and have distributed 1,048 books this past month to food pantries alone.
March calendar includes Read Along with a Cop at Starbucks in Yardley: a great chance to build awareness for the program and a deeper partnership with police.
Our volunteer list is growing. Strong partnerships are being formed. We have distributed 18,596 books to children since we began in 2017.
Our biggest needs continue to be space and fundraising. Currently, we are operating out of some space at United Way, a storage facility, some space at St. John the Evangelist Church and the use of our homes. We continue to look for a donation of space where we can have one central location to house, clean, label, sort, and shelve books in preparation for distribution. It’s all worth it to see the faces of children light up with a book in hand to call their own!