Have you Heard About Family Read-A-Thons?

Start a Family Read-A-Thon!

What’s not to love about this unique family activity?

It’s something your entire family can do together, even the little ones. It gets the family reading more. It raises money for a local charity or community organization.

And it can be done by just one family.

It’s a great concept I discovered in “Doing Good Together” (authored by Jenny Friedman, Ph.D and Jolene Roehlkepartain), a wonderful book of easy, meaningful service projects for families, schools and communities.

The basics:

Each family member commits to reading books during a set period of time.
You can expand the project beyond your immediate family: Ask grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to join you!
This is a wonderful way to help children learn about giving back to their own community.
Each participant keeps an individual list of the books read. The youngest members of your family can ‘count’ books read to them by a parent or books read together, including bedtime stories.
The family identifies a single charitable or community organization to benefit from the funds raised.
As a group, the family gets ‘sponsors’ for each book read.
Plan a family celebration at the end of your successful project!

Here are some ideas to help get your family project started:

Use your social media networks to let friends and family know about your Family Read-A-Thon.  Include the two benefits: Your family will be reading more books as part of a unique family activity. And, you’ll be raising money for a local community organization.
Notify the selected community organization of your project and how you plan to raise funds to support their activities.
Share information about the charitable or community organization that will benefit from your family project.
Let the sponsors decide the amount of support for each book read. Remind them that this is a family project, so sponsors are committing to the total number of books read by the entire family.
Notify sponsors of the start and end date.
Post updates during your Family Read-A-Thon via social media and emails.
Ask sponsors to make their checks payable to the organization you have selected and mail the checks to your family.
Deliver the checks – as a family – to the local charity or community organization or sponsors can mail checks directly to the organization with a note on the check that it is for your Family Read-A-Thon.

This is such a great idea that my daughter, grandson and I started our own Family Read-A-Thon on February 1st. And we’re reading through the end of March.  Our community service project is progressing. We had read 28 books by the end of February with 7 sponsors!

See for yourself and read all of the great comments we’ve received about our posts. Go to Reading for Cats and Dogs, our Facebook page, using this link.  While you’re there, would you LIKE our page? (Thanks!)

 

 

“Doing Good Together” is available on Amazon by using this link. With 101 service projects, it’s also a great resource for school and community group projects. The book contains an entire section on how to have a successful family project, including how to choose one; planning the project; and lots more.

 

Photo: http://www.123rf.com