By Gary Lloyd
Students at Paine Primary School are helping create avid readers across the greater Birmingham area by passing along the books they have already read.
The school last month participated in the Birmingham Reads Book Drive Challenge that was a part of the Birmingham Reads Project, a collaborative literacy project of Better Basics and the Junior League of Birmingham.
Paine Primary School collected 6,893 books to win the challenge. Paine Intermediate School came in second out of the 11 participating schools, collecting more than 5,000 books. More than 30,000 books were collected in the challenge. Paine Primary earns a $1,000 prize for winning the challenge
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The books that were collected will be provided to at-risk students through Better Basics programs. Better Basics is nonprofit agency dedicated to advancing literacy through reading enrichment and intervention programs in area schools. Better Basics program currently serve students in Birmingham and Fairfield City School systems, and Jefferson, Clay, Talladega, and Hale County school systems.
“Birmingham Reads is an important project that allows our community to come together to promote literacy,” said Karen Kapp, executive director of Better Basics. “The students participating in the Birmingham Reads Book Drive Challenge were inspired to help other children living within their community. By simply bringing in books they no longer read, or purchasing new books for the drive, hundreds of students provided wonderful literature to other children who might not have books of their own at home.”
The Birmingham Reads project is in its fourth year, and includes the Birmingham Reads Book Drive Challenge; Birmingham Reads Day, in which volunteers visit each kindergarten through fifth-grade class in Birmingham City schools to read a book to the students and to provide a copy of the book for each child; and the Birmingham Reads and Brookwood Celebrates event at Colonial Brookwood Village.
Contact Gary Lloyd at news@trussvilletribune.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryALloyd.