GIVE Center organizes book drive to help Katrina victims

     This month at The G.I.V.E. Center, Hands On Milledgeville is hosting a book drive to benefit a school in New Orleans that was rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.
     HOM is a program that was created by Kendall Stiles in The G.I.V.E. Center to promote volunteerism amongst the Milledgeville Community. HOM also acts as a chamber of commerce for non-profit organizations in Milledgeville and is influenced by a Hands On Georgia.
     The school that the collected books will be going to is McDonogh City Park Academy, a charter school with students from Kindergarten to eighth grade. McDonogh City Park Academy was one of the first schools in the New Orleans area to re-open after Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005.
     The book drive was started by Jah-Wann Galimore, an eighth grader at GMC, and his mother, Diedra Monroe, an administrative assistant in early childhood and middle grades education. Galimore and his mother are evacuees of the hurricane and have been participating in and starting different service projects since to help New Orleans. Galimore and Monroe heard about the needs of McDonough City Park Academy while doing volunteer work in New Orleans after the hurricane.
     The McDonogh City Park Academy is lacking books in its library and classrooms due to the damage of the hurricane.   The purpose of the book drive is to replenish the book shelves of the school and provide leisure reading books to the students. The book drive started during Hands On Georgia week, which was from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7 and will continue until the end of October.
     “We are collecting Kindergarten through eighth grade appropriate books,” Megan Tiedman, HOM in The G.I.V.E. Center volunteer said “The McDonogh City Park Academy does not have books in its    library or in the classrooms, so we are
looking for just about anything.”
The books are being collected in a bin in the lobby of The G.I.V.E. Center. This is the first year that The G.I.V.E. Center is hosting this book drive.
     In an effort to publicize the event, Tiedman has sent out a mass e-mail to both the GIVE center and HOM mailing lists detailing the book drive and encouraging others to participate. She has also created flyers and has provided interviews for The Union Recorder and the GCSU TV station.
    The G.I.V.E. Center has so far collected about 30 books, but Tiedman and HOM are expecting a lot more. The books will be taken to McDonogh City Park Academy over winter break when Galimore and his family go back to New Orleans.
     The G.I.V.E. Center is not the only organization providing help to McDonogh City Park Academy, though. Frilot L.C., an attorney firm in New Orleans is also collecting books through a “Book By Book” program, a branch of the New Orleans Charter School Foundation. The New Orleans Charter School Foundation is a nonprofit organization that sponsors the McDonogh City Park Academy and one other school is New Orleans.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry