An Impact on Reading
The Orange Lodge #1475 has received the Impact Grant from the Elks National Foundation (ENF) for the fifth year and again held a Reading Promise. You might be asking what it is the Reading Promise? The Reading Promise is a promise to provide a book for the student if they promise to read the book. The schools selected for this are pre-K to 6th grade students from the twelve Title 1 schools in the Orange Unified School District. The Reading Promise believes that by placing a brand-new book into the hands of a child who wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to own one is like planting a seed…a seed that will blossom into a lifelong love of reading.
The Reading Promise Chairmen Trace announced this year’s theme was “Reading is Magic”!
At the event this year each child attending received a backpack with a book, pencils, paper, a calculator, school supplies and other goodies! The student needed to visit five stations and get their cards punched to receive the backpack.
We are very thankful to Linda Cundiff, executive Director of the Orange Library for opening the library on a Sunday exclusively for this event.
With the full run of the library we are able to host the event and present many fun things for the kids that included Elk volunteers reading stories, offering a free library card, areas for kids to read books to therapy dogs, character-actor readers and Hayden Allcorn providing three magic shows.
The Reading Promise has a wide array of community partners who helped make this event a success! Some of our partners were Kiwanis Club of Orange who provided hot dogs and chips, the Independent Service Dog Foundation provided several service dogs for the children, the Boy Scout Troop #1475 and arts and crafts from the Chapman University Community Relations. Twelve-year-old Ryan Hickman provided recycle containers. Ryan’s mission is “Make the Sea Trash Free” and he helped put his badges on some four hundred and twenty-five backpacks
Forty-one Orange Elks, their family members and friends helped at the event.
Orange Elks member and mayor of Orange Mark Murphy reading to the students.
Shawn reading to students.
Deanna and Malana reading
The Reading Promise is a spectacular example of how the Orange Elks Lodge give their time, treasure, talent and teamwork to hold an event!
Snow White and Elroy thanked everyone for attending!
EDIT|Bill Neessen|1570385933
