On Wednesday I announced at Guys Lit Wire that we are sponsoring a holiday book fair at Powells Books to support the Ballou Sr High School library over the next ten days. After helping to lift the school from a terrible situation early this year where they had less than one book per student, to the current number of four books per student (still woefully less than the ALA standard of eleven books for each student), we decided that rather than move on to another school GLW would instead stay with Ballou. The reason is simple - we can make a real difference for Ballou with our ongoing involvement. There are many things that every child in this country should have a right to just because they are born here (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), and if a decent school library isn't one of them then we have truly entered the dark ages.
Access to library books should be something every school kid has, period and every one of you whose life was changed by their school library knows exactly what I am talking about.
Ballou High School should not be depending on an internet book drive to stock their library. We know this, we all know this, and yet here we are. This is just the way things are right now - schools do not have money and schools in low income neighborhoods have a lot less than most of us can imagine. So if Melissa Jackson is going to get books for her library then she needs help, specifically she needs a little bit of help from a lot of people she has never met. If all of us do our part - if we all spend what we can in the midst of our holiday shopping - then we can do some powerful stuff for this school. Most of us never know if we have made someone's life better but with one book purchase we can know - we can really know.
If you don't have cash to spare this year then please blog about the book fair, post it to facebook, send out a tweet. Let as many other folks know as you can. Bit by bit, book by book, we are building a library in Ballou. It's the worthiest of causes and I hope you will join us as once more, we do all that we can do to change the world for the students of Ballou.
