John Monfredo: Making Worcester “The City That Reads”
Saturday, May 25, 2013
With so many Central Mass participants lending a hand in this year's "Give a Book" drive, Worcester is on its way to becoming "The City That Reads."
The drive this year had the momentum right from the start; March 2nd (Dr. Seuss’s birthday) with our goal to collect over 27,000 books. We received seed books donations prior to the drive from Scholastic Books, Harvard Pilgrim Health, Hanover Insurance and from many of the colleges.
As we sort the books out this week, it appears that we have well over that amount for we not only have distributed books to all schools and were able to give more than enoughbooks to everyone in the schools. A special thank you is sent to Channel 3 Charter Communication for their constant publicity on the event with their book commercials and to the many business groups, educational organizations, health groups and most importantly the public for they made the drive a huge success.
Once again we had tremendous support from our private sector—Worcester Academy, Venerini Academy, Notre Dame Academy, St. Peter-Marian, Bancroft School and Holy Name all did a wonderful job. In addition, we received support from area public schools such as Wachusett Regional District elementary schools in Sterling, Holden and Princeton and from all the high schools in the Worcester Public Schools.
On the college level, collectively, nine participating colleges and Universities donated. The participating schools this year were: Assumption College, Becker College, Clark University, College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Worcester State University, Salter’s College, Quinsigamond Community College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Health groups that assisted were UMass Memorial, UMass Medical, St. Vincent’s Hospital and Fairlawn Rehabilitation Center. Also, UNUM and the Wilson Language Training Center also contributed to the success of the drive. All of these groups had their own book drives at their respective place and received books from their employees or their students.
In addition, help came from some of the Little Leagues of Worcester, the Worcester Credit Union, Starbucks Coffee on West Boylston and the Worcester Public Library. All of the Stop and Shop Markets, Shaws Markets, Light Lab on Shrewsbury Street, Building 19, the Jewish Community Center on Salisbury Street, the Greendale YMCA, and the RSVP Center contributed and had book boxes for the public to drop off their books.
A special thank you goes to United People’s Bank, Commerce Bank, Baystate Savings Bank, TD Bank, and the Bank of America at Tatnuck Square for opening their doors for the public to drop off books.
The books were stored at the Greendale Head Start site and we thank the Head Start site for allowing us to store and sort out the books at the school. It took over 35 hours to sort out the books to get them ready for distribution. Help was received from students at Doherty High School and Worcester Technical High School and from friends. In the mix there were over 1000 adult books that were donated to the Friends of the Worcester Public Library ( with most going to the Union Station site) and to the Worcester Recovery site. We thank Worcester Public Schools, Jack Navin, coordinator of maintenance, and his crew for picking up over 100 cartons of books at our house and delivering them to the book site.
Because of the generosity of many we will be able to spread the joy of reading this summer. More access to books results in more reading. We all know that students who read more, read better; they also write better, spell better and have larger vocabularies. A report from the National Institute of Education concluded “…the amount of reading done out of school is consistently related to gains in reading achievement.”
The books will be distributed to the children, pre-k to grade 6, during the week of June 10th as we celebrate “Reading in our city Week,” (A proclamation has been sent to Mayor Petty to be read at the June 4th City Council meeting.) The distribution of the books will be part of the Worcester Public Schools summer “kick-off” during Reading Week. It is our desire that the schools move the books around by having book swap days and be creative in how the books will be used.
In addition, books were also given to Head Start, many social agencies, and Inter-faith groups that will be running summer programs this summer. If there is any other group needing books for the summer (we have a few left) contact the Monfredo’s for assistance.
The key now is to encourage our children to read and to do this we need the assistance of parents and other adults to make it happen. As a community let us do everything possible to make our city a true “Worcester: the City that Reads.”
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