Since 2016, the Detroit Children’s Museum’s (DCM) has been very involved in DPSCD’s Little Free Library Program securing donations of high-quality books (175,000) and maintaining the libraries at each of our schools. According to Lead Educator, Charles Merrell, “We create ‘sets’ of books based on grade level/genre. Our curator Don Bogart creates lending kits with sets of books or books pertaining to dozens of topics for the borrowing by DPSCD educators. We deliver books to the homes of our educators and children.” Since June of 2020, they have shared 50,500 books!
Since its inception over five years ago, the program has been supported by donations of over $32,500 from General Motors, Valassis, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Stowaway Books, Wheelhouse Detroit, Trail Supply LLC, National Life Group, Northern Annuity & Life Specialists, Inc. and over 15 wonderful individuals! In addition, with the assistance of Jasmine Jackson, Senior Business Developer at Amazon (2008 Cass Tech graduate!), Amazon/Brilliance Publishing and the Amazon Detroit Black Employee Network have recently donated 34,000 books.
“Serving our families brings us great joy. “The smiles on the children’s faces are precious. Quite frankly, they deserve service like this,” says Charles Merrell.
A Carver STEM grandmother–“Thank you for what you do. You are very kind. My grandchildren love books.”