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Building bookshelves and fostering a love for reading at Lothrop Magnet Center

Posted at 8:18 AM, May 20, 2022
and last updated 2022-05-20 09:18:12-04

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — It’s building shelves and building new worlds of learning for kids at Lothrop Magnet Center.

Volunteers from United Way and HDR built bookshelves for the students to add to their collections.

As they add their own custom touches, volunteers say they hope this creates a sense of ownership.

"Seeing the kids, getting the bookshelves, seeing how excited they are when we show the assembly of them, it’s super rewarding knowing that the kids have something of their own that they might not have had the opportunity to have before is pretty exciting,” said Alison Ingunza, landscape architect at HDR.

While fostering a love of reading is important, volunteers hope it goes beyond that.

“There can be a lot of learning loss that happens over the summer, so by giving them these bookshelves at this time of year and be able to take home and have a stock of books to pull from, we’re hoping that’ll be really impactful for these students,” said Bekah Noxon, digital marketing manager.

Speaking of summertime, that's when you'll start to hear KMTV talk more about our annual If You Give a Child a Book campaign.

It started internally back in 2016 and now, with support of the Scripps Howard Foundation and across our stations, we're at 500,000 books and counting.

Visit this website for more.

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