CLARK COUNTY — A local non-profit is working to help kids get excited about reading one book at a time.
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About 50 kids in the Covenant Freedom School Program got their pick of topics like a trip to space, or maybe learning to write like a poet.
Soon-to-be seventh grader Camylah Watkins said she loves to read.
“I think it’s like kind of like an opening into a new world because you can think about fictional things and things that you can not do sometimes in the real world,” she said.
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The 150 books were presented by Conscious Connect CDC, a nonprofit that has provided more than 100,000 free books to folks in the region since 2016.
All part of an effort to strengthen youth literacy in every community, including underserved ones.
“We start placing books in barbershops and beauty salons, 65 across the Greater Miami Valley region, Springfield with Fresh to Barbershop downtown, all the way to Dayton to Trotwood,” Karlos Marshall, The Conscious Connect CDC co-founder, said. “We start to put up 30 free low libraries across the region as well. And that expanded to things like Words on Wheels, Book Bikes. Reading parks, revitalizing urban spaces, but just making sure that every kid had a book in their hand that they could resonate with and identify with.”
A smile on a face and a spark in someone’s eyes, a difference that Watkins said she can see in herself.
“I didn’t take it seriously and then I started doing it like last summer, I think, and I actually understand reading more and like I pass my classes a lot more than I used to. Like I would get B’s but not get all A’s, yeah that’s really cool,” Watkins said.
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