Shine City Project help Spread the Word!

On June 15, 2023, Shine City Project helped to clean books with Spread the Word Nevada! Spread the Word Nevada is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to advancing early childhood literacy by providing books for children and households located in at-risk, low-income neighborhoods in Nevada. Since 2001, they've been able to distribute over 7.1 million books to 790,025 students in both Northern and Southern Nevada. On average, that's 60,000 books for students each month!

For this Thursday evening, we had nine Shine City Project volunteers who came to help out! For the book cleaning, we had various tools at our disposal—a wet and dry cloth, plastic scraper, permanent marker, scissors, tape, erasers, and some goo and adhesive remover! We had to ensure that the front and back covers and individual pages were all clean and that any stray markings, stickers, and dirt were all removed. For books that were too damaged or contained unsuitable content for children, these books had to be placed in plastic bins for recycling.

Overall, it was an enjoyable and relaxing experience cleaning the books. Occasionally, there were books that would pique our interest, and we would find ourselves flipping and reading through each page. It was nostalgic to have a book in our hands as we now live busy lives and are often too accustomed with having our cell phones and other electronic devices. We hope that the books we clean can help encourage young readers!