Fountain Valley Students Create Book Exchange for Community

 

Two teens are promoting reading by providing free books to youth in the Fountain Valley. 

Girl Scouts Kara (Fountain-Fort Carson High School) and Brianne (Sproul Junior High School in Widefield) recently set up a book exchange at Fountain City Hall. Anyone is welcome to take a book and keep it, take it and bring it back for someone else to enjoy, swap it with another book, or donate their own. The girls hope this gets kids and teens excited about reading. 

The girls created the book exchange for their Silver Award project. The award is one of the highest awards in Girl Scouting. It requires a small group of Girl Scout friends to team up and find an issue they care about and then make a difference in their community. 

"What inspired me to choose the book exchange was how much I love reading. I never really found reading interesting because I didn't have accessibility to books that I love. I also wasn't aware of how many books there were to choose from. I felt like a lot of young readers had this problem, too. I wanted to create something that offered free books, encouraged reading, and showed people how many books there are to choose from,” said Kara. 

A majority of the books were donated by The Book Archive in Fountain. The remainder of the books came from a cash donation from a local resident so the girls could buy new books and also from the girls' own books that they had at home. 

The girls also designed and built the bookshelf. Lowes donated all of the wood and paint. 

Going forward, the girls hope that community members will drop off books to share with others to keep the shelves stocked. They will also monitor it and work to get donations if it is getting low.