Vivianna O.
Toms River
Better With Books
For Vivianna’s Gold Award Project, she lead a team to build book
stations made from wood holding over 1250 multi-level donated books
for children of homeless and domestic violence shelters called “Better
with Books.” The inspiration for this project came from the constant
contact she had with shelters and the increase of the children within
them Her project aimed to help children, those less fortunate, and
those who are innocent to the disposition put before them, helping to
help alleviate the root cause of a lack of reading and educational
books for children in shelters. The children living at the shelters do
not know when they will live in a home of their own again and have the
all the joys and resources, they had access to, which enhanced life
and made life thrive like books. After interviews of admins in
shelters and more research she decided on a 6-month collection of
books both new and used with drop boxes and donation requests from
stores to collect over 1,000 books and build multi-level book stations
of wood to conquer this problem. In total, she collected over 1,000
books from sites in NJ, cleaned the used books, sorted all the books
by age and reading levels, made flyers and advertised the book
collection on social media outlets, and cold called donors for book
station supplies. She then nailed, drilled, glued, painted, and
personalized each book station of wood.
