Cannock Soroptimists launched a campaign asking children in Rugeley, Hednesford, Burntwood, Cannock and Penkridge to donate pre-loved books for Books4Home, a Rotary project run by Beverley Ricketts to provide books to children who may not otherwise ever own a book; a project Soroptimists have supported for some time.
President Jackie Prince set an ambitious target of 2,000 books, – if you aim for the moon, you’ll certainly catch a star! Well – it seems they’ve entered a galaxy far, far away as the number of books donated by the most generous families is almost double that number! And many who have donated along with the venues who accepted the donations have said that they would love to continue!
The books have now been delivered to Beverley and she and her volunteers have begun to sort them ready for delivery to schools and groups in the coming weeks. This is a win-win project, bringing joy to those who are able to donate and help other children and to those who receive: they can have the pleasure and joy of being taken into other worlds with the magic of fiction or of discovering so much about our lives and our planet through the factual books; and the life span of every book is lengthened, thus becoming environmentally friendly!
As Beverley pointed out, these books would have cost over £20,000 to buy – no school library could ever afford that, but there is no price to be put on giving a child a book of their own to cherish.
Further details about this project and all that Cannock Soroptimists are involved with are also available on their Facebook page www.facebook.com/SICannock; or on twitter: @sicannock. If you would like to be involved please email soropscannock@gmail.com
Photo: Beverley Ricketts, far right; with Jackie Prince, President SI Cannock & District 5th from left; and the Soroptimists’ Book Team showing off a set of ‘Little Miss’ books!! – and 3,888 books!!