Assistance League Provides Books To Local Children

Every year at the end of February, the 120 chapters of the Assistance League organization participate in Action Week, an initiative to celebrate the birthday of founder Anne Banning by helping children to grow and know that others care about them. Each chapter devises its own plan to help children in need. For many years, Assistance League of Northern Virginia has focused its Action Week efforts on Literacy, and has provided new books to many schools. Most recently, the charity has held ‘book fairs’ at selected schools, at which every student receives a brand new book. Chapter members would come to the school and help each student select a book to take home on a topic of particular interest to that student.

This year’s Action Week initiative again supported literacy, with book donations at four of the Title 1 schools that the chapter supports... Unfortunately, the charity could not hold its usual book fair, because of Covid restrictions, so instead it delivered 675 brand new books to the librarian at one of the schools it serves. Members of the chapter’s Literacy Committee worked with the librarian to identify the best books for the school’s student population. Assistance League also donated 100 new books to another one of the schools it supports to help fill its Little Library, and included books suitable for young children in 58 quilt bundles delivered to two other schools. Because of the commitment and creativity of our members, the nonprofit’s Action Week program touched 833 young readers this year.