Tuesday, May 1, 2018

A Hair-Raising Book Club Service Project

I love to follow the work of Jarred Amato and his Project Lit students. One of the components of his book club that I love is his service projects. Seeing their work, lit a fire in me to organize service activities before the year ended.
I started a book club this year and while small in number, we've done some really fun things. We've Skyped with Steve Schafer and had two author visits, Corrie Wang and Nic Stone. We handed out books at our Serteen Trunk or Treat and had students attend Read Up Greenville.
During our latest meeting, we discussed service project ideas. We discussed doing a book fairy style book drop around the community, inviting community members and groups to join our discussions, planning Books and Braids with our nearby elementary schools, and collecting new pajamas and books around Christmas.
The project we decided to work on first is one inspired by this news story.

We didn't want to burden one barber or stylist so we wrote a letter to distribute to local salons, beauty parlors, and barbers. As donations come in, we plan to attach this coupon we made on Canva to a hair-themed book. 

We made a wish-list on Amazon for hair-themed books at all different levels. I reached out to the Project Lit and Future Ready Librarian Facebook pages for suggestions.

We will distribute the books and coupons to our feeder area schools so that our guidance counselors can give them to those most in need for a Back to School haircut.
We just shared the letter today so we all look forward to hearing back from our community soon. If you'd like to recreate this in your area and need a copy of something I've shared, send me a tweet at @coxtl and I'll be happy to help.
When school starts back we plan to collect donations of new combs and hair ties so that we can start visiting elementary schools for Books and Braids. This was their favorite idea so I'm looking forward to getting that started next year. What service projects do you do?

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