We wanted to share some exciting news with you about our Books and Badges program. You may remember this is the initiative that will enable Columbus Division of Police officers to read to elementary school classrooms, and then every student in that class will be able to take home a copy of the book that the officer reads.
This week we were approved as a Scholastic Literacy Partner, which means we can purchase books from the publisher Scholastic at an extremely discounted rate (some as low as $1!). They'll even send them to us with free shipping! Scholastic carries titles such as Flat Stanley, the Clifford the Big Red Dog books, and the "I Survived..." series. Those last ones are great if the officer wanted to read an excerpt and donate an educational book to an older class for them to study.
We're obviously thrilled about this and very grateful to Scholastic for offering this program to schools and charities as a way to encourage literacy. We're also very grateful to 100 Men Who Give a Damn Columbus whose $10,000 donation is what enabled us to start this program so quickly.
Our first Books and Badges event will be in December, and we'll start scheduling them in earnest in January once the kids return to school from winter break. We have a lot of officers wanting to get involved in this project, and they've had a lot of positive responses from the schools they've talked to. Stay tuned for more updates!
