King’s legacy and engage in a meaningful way with our mission.” Book Harvest’s Legacy is Empowerment Each year, the event provides a space where parents can volunteer with young children, coworkers can volunteer as a team, service groups can dedicate their efforts, and anyone who wants to is able to find a way to honor Dr. “In addition to being a great big celebration of literacy and books for all kids,” explains Berman, “Dream Big also represents a unique volunteer opportunity. This year, the first 200 volunteer slots posted were filled within 43 minutes! Young is forever grateful for the passion and commitment of the volunteers who continue to show up, many of them year after year. Sponsors donated $116,100 to make Dream Big and Book Harvest‘s work happen year-round! (Check out all our sponsors here - including our first-ever Dream Sponsor, Hendrick Subaru Southpoint! Special thanks to our other top sponsors: Duke University Libraries, Scholastic, Wells Fargo, Mebane Foundation, Written Word Media, and United Way of the Greater Triangle.)Īn event of this magnitude requires an army of volunteers.74 neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and organizations ran book drives and collected new and gently used books to donate! (See the huge list here!).1,113 people packed Rhythms Live Music Hall to volunteer and celebrate with us at Dream Big on MLK Day! (The largest number ever).“But that’s not the only inspiring number I’m marveling at today:” “Imagine ALL of the home libraries those books will fill, the bedtime stories they will provide, the pride their new owners will feel when they put them on their bookshelves or bedside tables!” said Book Harvest Communications and Events Manager Daniele Berman. A total of 42,183 new and gently used books were collected during the event and throughout the month of January! This year’s Dream Big Book Drive and Community Celebrations was another amazing success. This is the one day when all of our communities are in the same space: families who are enrolled in Book Babies, families who harvest books from the laundromats and health centers where we stock shelves, families who’ve done book drives for us, local business leaders, elected officials, foundation staffs, and those who care about literacy. We come together once a year for this glorious celebration and hope people will remember us all year long. “Book Harvest is here 365 days a year because books are an evergreen need. This annual event is part book drive, part volunteer opportunity, part activity fair, and part fundraiser. But the main goal for the day is to bring the entire community together in celebration of the organization’s big dream: that all kids can grow up in a world in which reading, learning, and access to information are considered rights and not privileges so that all children can thrive.” Over 1,000 people showed up for Book Harvest’s annual Dream Big Book Drive and Community Celebration. King’s vision of a world in which every child has the chance to realize his or her full potential. “Today, Book Harvest’s annual Dream Big Book Drive and Community Celebration remains deeply connected to MLK Day, the day on which it has been held for nine years we are inspired by Dr. That first event brought in 10,122 books – and we were off to the races!” Inspired by the Vision of Dr. “Dream Big began as an experiment to see if we could collect book donations on MLK Day 2012 in our first year, we had several new bookshelves throughout the community that needed books every week, and we were working hard to bring in the donations to keep those shelves of free books for kids stocked. As her dream grew, so did the need to collect more books. ![]() Soon she and a team of volunteers were supplying donated books to children and programs across Durham and Orange counties and Book Harvest was born. To combat the problem, and to fulfill her dream that “every child in our community should grow up in the presence of books, and plenty of them,” Young began collecting donated books in her garage. And there are a lot of kids in our midst who don’t own books.” “The consequences of raising a child in a bookless home are direct, severe, and lifelong. If we wait until a child starts school, we’ve waited too long,” she explained. “The benefits of a book-rich home environment begin accruing at birth. Jade Vaughan-Bey reads to her mother, Taquoia Street. Hearing such wisdom from a young child brought a huge smile to the face of Book Harvest Founder Ginger Young who exclaimed enthusiastically, “Jade gets it – that’s what this program is all about!” ![]() “Everyone needs to become a good reader so that when they are an adult they will have a better life,” said six-year-old Jade Vaughan-Bey during Book Harvest’s Dream Big Book Drive and Community Celebration held on MLK Day at Rhythms Live Music Hall in downtown Durham.
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