TheAssistance League of North Coast actually began planning their Action Weekactivities in October of 2021 when Kriss Steward, philanthropic chairperson,met with Stephanie Chaldy at Barnes and Noble. Stephanie said she wanted tocreate a partnership with ALNC in which the store would hold a book drive fromNovember 1st-December 24th, and two book fairs, the firston Sunday, December 5th and the second during Action Week, onSaturday, February 26th. During the Book Drive members of thecommunity bought 814 books to donate to our “I Love to Read” program. Both bookfairs brought us over $400.00 in gift cards to be used to purchase additionalbooks. At the book fairs members of our chapter read stories, sang songs andhelped the children with arts and crafts projects. Approximately 30 childrenattended each of the fairs. Emmy winning news anchor, and local author AndrewLuria, attended both book fairs and signed his book, “The Adventures of CharlieMarley: Midnight’s Moments in Time”. Stephanie not only arranged for theevents, she also invited the Starbuck’s, located in the store, to create a veryspecial “Cat in the Hat” Frappuccino, from which ALNC also receive a percentageof the sales.
A group ofvolunteers from our chapter met and sorted the books into grade level readingabilities and labeled each one with our chapter’s “I love to Read” logo.Approximately 100 books that were donated were at a middle school readabilitylevel so were delivered to three middle schools. It was decided to bring therest of the books to Foothill Oaks Elementary School in Vista where the povertyrate is above 80%.
Members ofour chapter were excited to be invited by counselor, Whitney Deweese, to participatein Foothill Oaks’ week-long celebration of school’s “Read Across America”program. When she was notified that her school had been chosen to receive over700 books she said, “This is Amazing News! I am going to speak with myadministrators to see what we can do to include you in our events. I want tosee if we can possibly get you on campus to help with the book giveaway.” Twodays later she emailed back saying it was all clear, our volunteers could comeon campus. This was the first time ourvolunteers were invited back in two years because of the Covid protocols. OnThursday, February 3rd, eleven members read Dr. Suess stories to thechildren at every grade level, prek-5th’ On Friday March 4ththe books were distributed to the 480 very excited students. There were lots ofsmiles and many thanks.
Whitney wasvery pleased when she was told the additional books, which the students did notpick-out on Friday, were also for the school. She said they would be a greataddition to their parent literacy program.
