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(PCON Members volunteering at Book’em – February 2022)
On Wednesday, February 2nd and Wednesday, February 9th, members of the Phoenix Club volunteered with one of our long-standing partners, Book’em, to process books for K-5th graders in the Davidson County School District.
Two notable highlights from these efforts:
1) On 2/2, nine members of PCON processed 2400 books in a 2-hour period – shattering the previous Book’em record.
2) On 2/9, six PCON volunteers sorted, processed and loaded some 1500 books in addition to hundreds of gift bags.
A big thank you goes out to our friends Jocelyn Kirk and Olivia Fuerst for hosting us!
About Book’em:
Book’em began in 1989 when four women (Lee Fairbend, Karen Estevez-Gill, Georgeanne Chapman, and Ruth Ann Harnisch) united to find opportunities to assist the local chapter of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the largest non-profit children’s literacy organization in the United States, in meeting its needs for books and volunteers. Books were collected and distributed through the Christmas Clearing Bureau, and eventually these distributions were expanded to schools and community organizations – Books for Nashville’s Kids was born. Book’em grew through the years, distributing tens of thousands of books annually and adding Ready for Reading, a volunteer-based reading program in early learning centers. Book’em merged with RIF in 2006, and now administers the RIF program in 16 Title I Metro Nashville elementary schools. In 2021, they distributed more than 193,000 books to children in Davidson County, ranging in age from 0-18.