General Announcement:

Anyone wanting to cook a meal for the tornado victims, please contact Kelsie Funke.

Thank you to the 2007-08 Board for a Job well done!

_________________________________________________________________

Literacy News:

2007-2008 has been a busy year so far for the JLFH Literacy Project! 

New community bookshelves have been established at the following:

Konza Prairie Community Health Center            Flint Hills Breadbasket
Manhattan-Ogden Head Start                            Crisis Center
Ogden After School Program                             Flint Hills Community Clinic

These are in addition to our four existing bookshelves. We also provided books to Manhattan Day Care, Greensburg, KS relief efforts, and librarians at Theodore Roosevelt, Northview, and Bluemont elementary schools for their students in need of books.  In total, we have donated more than 3,000 books this year through these efforts.  The books redistributed through our community bookshelves are acquired through our annual book drives held at local schools.
                                                                                                                                 
We are also very pleased to announce that the JLFH literacy project recently received 6,344 new children’s books from the First Book National Book Bank just in time for the holidays!  These are brand new books which must be given directly to the children.  In December, we delivered more than 2,200 of these books to the Manhattan Boys & Girls Club, CASA, Head Start, and the Crisis Center to be distributed at their Christmas parties. 

Another exciting new literacy program is “Young Authors.” Elementary students will develop books with illustrations during an eight-week period. The teacher will facilitate the project and two League volunteers will assist the students during their writing sessions. When completed, the League will have the books bound and organize a party for the children to read their books to the parents. This program will be piloted in two Bluemont Elementary 5th grade classrooms this spring.