Happy Giving Tuesday! Here at Literati, we’re getting into the spirit of the holidays by giving back to our community. We’re thrilled to participate in this year’s Coats for Kids Community Fair, in partnership with the Junior League, to support our local little readers.
Coats for Kids is an annual event in Austin that has supplied warm coats to children for more than three decades. Each year, the organization collects 30,000+ coats, which are dry-cleaned and given to children across the Central Texas region.
As for Literati’s contribution? On Monday Dec. 2, we donated about 10,000 books. These will be handed out at Saturday’s Community Fair at the Palmer Events Center, along with other fun giveaways and free health screenings.
Every child can choose a book to take home with them, and we’re thrilled that we get the chance to encourage these young readers to fall in love with reading.
“We are so excited to be able to give out books this year,” said Lauren Corbett, who leads the Junior League’s Coats For Kids Community Fair. “We are super appreciative of Literati’s donation, because part of Coats for Kids is making sure every kid has a warm winter coat, but we also have an opportunity while the families are here in one place to equip them with other resources to help them during other parts of the year. Every kid loves being able to go home with more than just a coat in hand.
The books came from Literati club members as part of our donations program. We encourage our club members to use their empty turquoise box to donate any books they may have outgrown. They can do that for free with a prepaid mailer that’s enclosed in their box. Through partnerships with local organizations like the Junior League, public school districts, and early childhood literacy advocates, we find new homes for all these books.
So far in 2019, we’re honored to have donated books to Bookspring, Del Valle ISD, Austin ISD, Parkside Community School, Hawthorne Elementary in San Antonio, as well as Helping Hand Home, Red Arena, and the Storybook Project. Now, with Coats for Kids, we’re close to 40,000 books donated this year alone.
A huge thank you to every member of our Literati community (yes, you too!) for your generosity, your support, and most of all, your fierce love of literature. We couldn’t do what we do without your help, and we’re so grateful.
The gift of reading is a gift for life, and we’re so happy to be able to pass that on to another generation.
