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2008 District Three Conference Project

Book List per info below

The time for the 2008 District Three Conference is fast approaching and the excitement among the host Charlotte club is growing daily. We are anxious to “make some dreams come true “in several ways. One of the most exciting is the project we have picked for the Conference Project. We are going to call it “District Three Altrusans Making Dreams Come True in New Orleans.”

We have been in contact with several schools in the area and have picked one high school and several elementary schools who need help with restocking their libraries. Warren Easton High School was under eight (8) feet of water during Hurricane Katrina and their library lost over 10,000 books! 10,000! Can you imagine? The Physical Education Department and the Athletic Exercise Room were also destroyed during the hurricane. They reopened last September and as teacher Nancy Hernandez reported, they are just rebuilding their school one day at a time as they are providing an education to 837 students. In response to our question of needing help, she said they would be thrilled with anything we could do for her school. She does have fiction books but needs non-fiction books and the books – per the American Library Assdociation guidelines - need to be have a copyright date that is not more than five (5) years ago.

They are also in need of a current set of World Book Encylopedias and the Charlotte club is going to work on one set … but they could probably use more than one or as Nancy said in her email, “we will pass on and share with other schools anything that we can’t use or that is duplicated.”

We are asking each member who attends conference to bring one or more books for this project - after all, our main service goal is to promote literacy. We will have labels that say “Donated by District Three Altrusans’ that conference attendees will help put inside the books and also to help box them for the trip to New Orleans. We will make some pictures of us doing the project and also we will have some things we can all sign to send along with the books.

We are excited about the possibility of this project. We hope you will participate - maybe you could even have a “Book Shower” at one of your meetings so those members who cannot attend can participate. Check out some of the suggestions included here and if you have questions, contact a teacher or librarian in your club or at one of the local schools and they will be glad to help make suggestions. A longer list of books, as well as a source for ordering, for the high school will be added to the websites and also mailed to your club presidents due to the length of the list that was furnished to us by a book seller to schools. If you have any questions or want the name of our “seller,” you can contact Marlene Jones at marlene@cmenterprise.net or Melanie Bowser at melanie.bowser@cms.k12.nc.us.