Donate to 'book bins' located at Shropshire leisure centres
Residents are being urged to donate children's books to drop-off points in the county's leisure centres.
Shropshire Community Leisure Trust has gone into partnership with national charity Children’s Book Project to help tackle book poverty.
The Trust, which manages several leisure centres across the county including Oswestry Leisure Centre and Market Drayton Swimming & Fitness Centre, will be collecting books at the centres.
They will then ensure that these books are distributed to underprivileged children across the UK to help tackle book poverty, giving every child the opportunity to own a book.
Book ownership has been directly linked with improved mental health, while reading fluency itself has a significant impact on children’s successful progression through education.
The trust team are asking local people with good quality children’s books to drop them off at its facilities. Each centre will have a dedicated ‘book bin’ for customers to use.
Chris Stanbrook, partnership manager for the trust, said: “We’re delighted to link up with the Children’s Book Project, helping them with their important work of providing books to children who may be currently missing out on this crucial element of a young person’s educational development.
“We will be hosting the book bins until Friday 10 June 2022, so if you’re someone with unwanted, but good quality, children’s books for the under 12s in your home, please pop along to one of our centres and give the gift of reading.”
Kirstin Knell, from the Children’s Book Project, said: “We are over the moon to be supported by Shropshire Community Leisure Trust, whose centres provide such an important way for the local community to get together.
"Every book donated by families will be gifted on by our volunteers to children with few of their own. We’re so looking forward to seeing the results of everyone’s spring sort of their bookshelves and sharing the very real impact these books have had.”
The Children’s Book Project was registered as a charity in 2019, won the Queen’s Award for Volunteering in 2020, and to date has donated over 600,000 books across the UK.
