Over the past four weeks, KSBY and the community came together for the first time to participate in the Scripps Howard Foundation's "If You Give a Child a Book..." campaign.
This campaign has been held through The E.W Scripps Company over the past three years and in total has donated more than 180,000 new books to children facing poverty in their community.
Here at KSBY, we are happy to announce that with help from our employees and the generous community we raised $28,646. KSBY will now partner with Scholastic to turn these monetary donations into brand new books for students at Arellanes Elementary School in Santa Maria.
KSBY began the campaign internally in early August and in total raised $3,553. The Scripps Howard Foundation matched a part of our donations bringing that total up to $6,861. We then turned to the community for a five-day campaign during which more than 270 donors pledged a total of $16,785. The Scripps Howard Foundation matched the first $5,000 donated by the community bringing that number to $21,785.
"As the school that will be receiving the books through the 'If You Give A Child A Book..' campaign, I just wanted to express my deep thanks and gratitude to the many people that donated to make this a reality for our students," Ron Smith, the principal at Arellanes said. "We look forward to being able to deliver those and see the smiles on each child's face as they take home a stack full of books. More importantly, your stories did an excellent job of showcasing, on a daily basis, the importance of early literacy for young people."
KSBY also wants to thank all of those who donated this year. We look forward to many more years of this campaign and partnering with other Title One schools here on the Central Coast.
If you missed any of our coverage regarding the importance of literacy for children at a young age, please see the links below.
