United Way of Lake County, in partnership with Bernie’s Book Bank, have teamed up to create a child literacy campaign called Page it Forward. Surprisingly, it took only two months to top their summer goal of collecting 100,000 children’s books, establishing it as Lake County’s biggest book drive ever!
Mounting interest in Page it Forward has inspired United Way of Lake County to increase its book drive goal to 150,000 books by September 21st.
Bernie’s Book Bank, located in Lake Forest, will take all the donated books and package them into bundles of six and distribute them to low-income children throughout the Lake County area. If the Page it Forward campaign reaches their new goal of 150,000 books, a whopping 25,000 low-income Lake County children will receive “little libraries”. Many of these 4 and 5 year-olds will be seeing a children’s book for the first time. To date, over 113,000 books have been collected and nearly 20,000 children have already received books from the Page it Forward campaign, which will not only help children develop literacy skills, but will also inspire a love of reading.
“Sadly, it’s a fact 76% of our incoming kindergarteners will have little or no knowledge of books at all,” says Jennifer Yonan, Vice President of Marketing and Donor Relations – United Way Lake County. “Once we realized that, we mobilized with Bernie’s Book Bank to address this alarming need. Page it Forward was our solution. And the community support, frankly, has been incredible.”
While eight public summer drop off events anchored the book drive, the United Way of Lake County, from the onset of the campaign, encouraged the community to ‘Page it Forward’ in their own way, as the campaign name suggests.
There have been a variety of fresh and unique ways that supporters, volunteers, businesses, media, bloggers and citizens have contributed. Whether it’s hosting a Page it Forward party, donating books via text messaging, taking the time write a blog post in support of Page it Forward, holding book collections at a local business or bargain hunting for children’s books to donate back to the community.
Sarah, a 10-year old from Northbrook, collected books at her birthday party in-lieu of birthday presents. One supporter implemented a clever 24-hour personal fundraising campaign and raised close to $2000. Four more supporters, including United Way of Lake County Board Members, volunteers and affinity group members, joined together to form a relay team to ‘run’ a virtual 10K to raise $10,000 in one week! Every single person who took the time to “like” the Page it Forward Facebook page donated a book to a child from sponsors Harris Bank and Waukegan Tire. To date, nearly 1,500 books have been donated via Facebook alone.
“We really wanted to be creative in leveraging today’s digital and hyper connected world to make the campaign as accessible as possible to the community at large. So far we’re very thrilled with the results,” said Yonan. “But what inspires us today and tomorrow is the game-changing impact that just one self-directed Page it Forward advocate or family can have on their community. A perfect example of that and how to ‘Live United’ is the Wilkovs.”
Deerfield residents, Willie and Andee Wilkov and their children Ally and Ryan, motivated by the idea that every child should have the opportunity to read, created their own Page it Forward campaign with an ambitious goal of collecting 10,000 books by the end of the summer. They eclipsed that goal in a month and anticipate vaulting over the 20,000 book mark very soon.
What’s next for Page it Forward?
“From what we’ve seen in the last two months, the sky’s the limit for Lake County and other communities. Just recently, people donated just over 9000 books. In one day. In one week’s time, four supporters are running a personal fundraising relay to raise another $10,000. We’re beginning to see Page it Forward campaigns take root out of state. We’re excited to see where all this momentum goes,” Yonan said. “But first things first – we need to concentrate on collecting another 50,000 books in the next few weeks!”