A “Thank You” From St. Vincent de Paul
Grade 2 teachers received this beautiful “Thank You” letter from St. Vincent de Paul Village for the Grade 2 Book Drive donations that they’d like to share. Please pass this message along to your children who were kind enough to bring in books for others to enjoy:
Dear Students and Teachers:
Imagine your life without books. Imagine experiencing your childhood with a very narrow view of the world. You only know what you see and what you hear the people around you say. You are a baby and spend your days strapped in a stroller. As a toddler and preschooler, you never get the chance to explore your environment. You have never held a book. Maybe you don’t know there is a world beyond a street sidewalk, where you spend most of your days. You don’t attend school regularly. This is a young homeless child’s world.
Owning a book is a luxury that not everyone in America has the opportunity to experience. Without a book, you don’t know how expansive the world is, how great our oceans are, how vast space is. So, when you start a book drive to benefit homeless children, you are giving them an opportunity to learn about life outside of their own limited boundaries. When you went through your bookshelf to pick out a book to donate to one of our children and then carried it to school and put it in the donation box, you made a huge difference in a homeless child’s life. Because of you, a child may learn to read and write, excel in their school classroom work, and maybe even attend college. You have brightened someone’s future just by your simple task. It only took a little extra work on your part and because of your effort, you may have told a homeless child that the world is waiting for him.
It’s so simple. Please remember your contribution to society is immense when you just take the time to share something of yourself. You gave a homeless child a book. Without books, children can’t learn to read. It can be as simple as giving just one book.
Thank you,
Jayne Gongol
Family Literacy Coordinator
