At Lafayette Academy, a school of 760 students on Carrollton Avenue
chartered by the Choice Foundation through the RSD, books are still an
issue. Volunteers have stepped in with their pocketbooks and their schedules
trying to bridge the book gap.
“Our library is 65 percent to 75 percent finished,” said
Choice Foundation board member Carol Asher. “We are still waiting
for software for the Dewey Decimal System and the shelves are about 40
percent full right now.”
Books are lacking in the library and the classrooms, where children
are customarily exposed to children’s novels and other books more
accessible than textbooks, Asher said, drawing them into the reading
experience on a daily basis.
To deal with the shortfall, nearly 200 volunteers from international
software company Prolifics teamed with national nonprofit the Pajama
Program at Lafayette Academy Jan. 27-28 to give the school boxes of books
and spruce up its walls with murals and fresh coats of paint.
“Three busloads of volunteers from Prolifics came down here from
all over the world and handed out books, built shelves in the library
and read with the kids,” Asher said. “They are just great
corporate citizens.”
Prolifics donated $10,000 for supplies, books and pajamas for the students,
while company employees and software giant IBM matched the donation,
said Devi Gupta, vice president of marketing.
Other corporate partners joined in the fundraising effort, pushing the
total amount raised above the $35,000 Prolifics goal, Gupta said.
“We were able to raise $36,000 for Lafayette Academy, which we
are really proud of,” she said. “We have an off-site conference
every year, and we always dedicate half of a day to a teambuilding exercise.
We really wanted to go to New Orleans this year so we could give back
to the community.”
Mindy Caplan, president of the Louisiana chapter of the Pajama Program,
contacted Prolifics about helping Lafayette Academy, and a partnership
was born.
The Pajama Program ordinarily works with homeless shelters and day-care
centers such as Kingsley House, Caplan said, but schools are becoming
more of a focus as many students lost nearly everything to Katrina.
“This is just a wonderful program,” Caplan said. “We
give each child a book and a pair of warm, comfy pajamas. It’s
a positive approach because we make people feel better.”
The 3,200 books donated to Lafayette Academy are classroom sets, Caplan
said, which enable students to become actively engaged in reading within
the classroom.
“With these classroom sets, every child in the class will get
the same book and it will become theirs,” Asher said. “Nothing
is better than getting a new book.”
While the classroom sets help fill gaps in the school’s classroom
book selection, Asher said the need for library books remains.
“Libraries are always going to need more books,” she said. “Kids
don’t return books, they lose them or something happens to them.
There’s always going to be more need.”• |
