International Book-Giving Day is the brain child of Amy Broadmoore, of the blog Delightful Children's Books. It takes place on February 14th - Valentine's Day! How perfect.
At our school, we're planning to make this occasion a whole-school event in 2014. There are lots of places we can give books here in Hungary, including the community service projects we already have:
Orphanages in Hungary and Romania: we currently give clothes, toys, and playground equipment
Refugee camps: we currently give clothes and toys
Homes for the elderly: we currently visit and sing songs at holiday time
Visitors from Special Olympics: we currently host a mini Special Olympics at our school
The Prizma School for children with severe learning disabilities: we currently invite these children to a carnival at our school
Csodalampa (Make-a-Wish): we currently fulfill three to five wishes of seriously ill Hungarian children
Imagine the difference we could make in children's lives if we added book donations to each of these initiatives. Our already-meaningful gifts of time and money would also include a gift of literacy.
There are even beautiful bookplates we can add to the books we give. Love!
This year, before we even knew about International Book-Giving Day, we gave books in two significant ways.
We raised over $1,000 for the library at the American School in Tunis. The school's library was ransacked by looters and their books and computers were destroyed. Students and parents donated the cost of a new picture book, created book plates, and raised enough money to buy many new picture books to replace the school's collection.
We won an award from Read to Grow for sending a high volume of books to schools in various African countries. From our library, I weeded over 3,000 volumes, and we sent many other textbooks and classroom resource books as well, over 8 cubic meters.
If you participated in International Book-Giving Day this year, please share a blog post about it here. We're gathering ideas and stories and making the celebration last until March 21st!
You might also like to hop over to these other blogs of Book-Giving Day champions! And here are pictures of some of the great events that happened this year.
Asia in the Heart, in the Phillipines
Delightful Children's Books, in the US
Gathering Books, in Singapore
Jojoebi Designs, in Japan
Kids Indoors, in Brazil
Mommy Labs, in India
My Best Friends are Books, in New Zealand
My Book Corner, in Australia
Playing By the Book, in the UK
se7en, in South Africa
Sharpread, in the US
Thanks so much for co-hosting the blog hop! -Amy
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