We cleaned out a little bit at Little Book Locker HQ in Hudson.
Through other friends, Heather and I (Kristen) made a new friend named Keyla Kelly who is exactly the person we needed to meet. She is the Executive Director of a non-profit called FIELDS CORNER CROSSROADS COLLABORATIVE. It's an umbrella group for several other smaller non-profits in Dorchester. Keyla wrangles all the groups into combining efforts that work for social and economic equity, youth well being, and family-centered care. Which includes organizing a read-a-thon on WORLD READING DAY and giving away books to kids! See why we needed to meet her?
Here is Heather, Keyla, and Kevin, who works with Keyla at DotHouse Health, where her office is located. And this is only about 2/3 of the books, a bunch of boxes were on the other side of the room!
The people who live in the Fields Corner neighborhood of Dorchester (a section of Boston if you're not from around here) are diverse. There are a lot of Black families as well as Latine families and Vietnamese families.
So Keyla made posters in various languages for the Read-a-thon, and we brought books in English and also Spanish.
We couldn't find books for kids in Vietnamese so that's a project for another time, but we did bring as many books with Asian kids as main characters as we could find. It's so important for kids to see themselves in the books--Keyla said that as we dropped them off--and that is what we're trying really hard to do at Little Book Locker.
