Kids to Kids Raises $30,000 and 20,000 Books Through Read-a-Thon and Book Drive

April 8, 2007 - Kids to Kids recently celebrated the success of two programs kicked-off during Nevada Reading Week, February 26 to March 2, 2007.

Pennies for Pages One Hour Read-a-Thon

Approximately 10,000 at-risk students in the Las Vegas valley recently participated in the annual Pennies for Pages One Hour Read-A-Thon during Nevada Reading Week. Area students took on the challenge of reading more than 222,328 pages as they received matching monetary donations for the pages they read.

Donations received totaled more than $30,000. The money raised will be used to purchase more books for the Kids to Kids program.

Local companies Majestic Realty and Lee's Helping Hand donated $6,500 and $5,000, respectively.

Majestic Management Company is proud to be a community partner of Kids to Kids. Jean Frederick, Property Manager for Majestic Management, commented, "Kids to Kids melds perfectly with Majestic's philosophy of enabling at-risk communities to evolve beyond their current situations by way of early childhood literacy efforts. Each of the programs implemented by Kids to Kids helps foster an excitement for reading and development of life-long literacy skills by placing books into the hands and homes of at-risk children. The Pennies for Pages Read-a-Thon was just one of the fun ways Kids to Kids does this, and Majestic was glad to be a supporter."

Participants for the read-a-thon also came from other partner schools in the valley who believe in promoting literacy and wanted to donate their time to raise money for less fortunate classmates. Marlan J. Walker Elementary School alone read more than 108,744 pages. Tanaka Elementary also participated in the read-a-thon and conducted a book drive that brought in more than 600 books.

Book Drives for Kids to Kids

In addition to the read-a-thon, Kids to Kids reached out to the schools in the Las Vegas valley to conduct book drives during Nevada Reading Week.

"We are thrilled to announce that through the hard work of many Kids to Kids partnership schools, more than 20,000 books have been collected during Nevada Reading Week for our program," explained Lisa Habighorst, Executive Director of Spread the Word Nevada. "These books will enable us to meet our commitment of books to the 13 at-risk schools that we serve on a monthly basis. The goodwill and learning opportunities generated by Kids to Kids, for all our valley children, are truly priceless."

Special thanks go to Canarelli Middle School. The school collected 8,249 books. Additional acknowledgement goes out to Wright Elementary, Dean Allen Elementary, Staton Elementary, Arbor View High School, Lamping Elementary, Anthony Saville Middle School, Alexander Dawson Middle School and Schofield Middle School for their wonderful participation and enthusiasm for this program. These precious books will be cleaned by senior volunteers and will be placed in the hands of more than 10,000 children in 13 at-risk schools.

Companies throughout the valley also saw the need to help including Sierra Health Services. Sierra hosted a book drive, spearheaded by Angela Berg. Berg coordinated the donations at each corporate and clinical location. The total number of books collected was 1,097.

"We believe good health care requires a partnership between the physician, parent and child," explains Berg, RN manager, Southwest Medical Associates Pediatrics. "SMA's literacy initiative creates early awareness of the importance of reading. The generous contribution of books will play a large role in helping us to reach our young patients early on and with regular frequency. The turn-out was more than we had hoped for. We gathered 1,097 books to help our effort to make a difference in the lives of children every day. A special thanks to all who supported this effort."

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