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Local community members help bring books to base

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sean M. Crowe
  • Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs
JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. --  Members from several local and national organizations came together to donate approximately 13,000 children's books to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, March 19, 2014, at the Burlington County College campus in Mount Laurel, N.J.

BCC and First Book, a non-profit enterprise that provides books for free or low cost to qualifying demographics including military children, teamed up with the JB MDL Librar-E and Resource Commons Center staff to provide books for military children at the joint base.

"We wanted to reach out to the local community and take a grass roots approach for the program we had been designing for the past year," said Erica Franklin, BCC Service Learning coordinator. "The First Year Initiative Program students sparked the rest of the partnerships that made the drive possible. We had some English 101 students at BCC research in the local community to find potentially eligible organizations and then reach out to them to share information about First Book and this distribution."

The First Year Initiative is a program in which students participate in a variety of volunteer events. The book drive is one of the many they will participate in throughout the year. The First Year Initiative program, in collaboration with the BCC African American Chamber of Commerce and New Jersey secretary of higher education, Rochelle Hendricks, worked with JB MDL affiliates to coordinate base approval and support.

"This is the first book drive I've ever participated in," said Colleen Heaney-Burcher, BCC student. "More often I see food and clothes being donated, but this event contributes to education which is also very important. I've had a lot of fun getting books to kids who might not have them readily available."

The volunteers from BCC worked hand in hand with volunteers from the 87th Force Support Squadron to physically move the mountain of books from the distribution facility at BCC to the Librar-E.

"BCC has always been good to us and were very easy to work with as far as covering logistics and manpower," said Mimi Cirillo, Librar-E director. "I would like to continue working with them and other schools in the community."

The Librar-E personnel received the books and will distribute them to military children with new and existing programs.

"Our goal is to get the books directly in the hands of children instead of on our bookshelves," said Cirillo. "We have quite a few programs already in place to distribute the books and we will have more programs to come."

The Librar-E will host the following events to distribute the books received:
-Summer reading program May 21.

-United Reading event, in which children will read books on camera for their deployed parents.

-Story Walk, which is an event where children read book pages posted to trees along a trail to kick off the summer reading program.

-Birthday program for military children to receive a free book on their birthdays and other seasonal programs.

The Librar-E will announce more programs as they are developed. Call (609) 754-2079 for more information on Librar-E programs.