BTF’s Books4Kids Project improves success, nurtures creativity, and challenges students to be better readers…
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss
If you are a student in Turkey and your school is in a remote village somewhere and don’t have any books, you cannot go to all those places that the books will take you…Not having books in classrooms is one of the problems in rural school classrooms which is the root cause of illiteracy in Turkey.
Studies let us know that daily reading helps improve student success, increase fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and grammar while nurturing creativity, critical thinking as well as challenging students to be better readers…That is why we created our Books4Kids project which has 135 story books in elementary level, and 80 story books in kindergarten level. Our partner in Turkey is Pandora Books. BTF Elementary Level Book Set costs $300 and Kindergarten Level Book Set costs $200.
At BTF, we, volunteers keep receiving e-mails from teachers about how reading makes a difference in the lives of their students…Our rural school teachers write back to us after they receive their shipment of story books and comment on the improvement of their students.
As one of the teachers perfectly put it “Books mean new worlds, new dreams, new opportunities…It makes my students to be creative, to be better speakers, to be better readers and helps them express their ideas and feelings much better than before. My students and I are more hopeful about the future as we read a different book each time we come to the class and we know that the next day there will be other books to read in our classroom.
As you volunteers suggested, I told my students that whoever reads more books in this semester will receive The Arabian Nights book as a gift. My students got very excited. Before the winter break we gave The Arabian Nights book to our bookworm. She was thrilled:-) Knowing that there are people on the other side of the world who think of us, who value us and who care about our future makes us tremendously happy and hopeful…” This is one of many teachers that we were able to reach in this school year.
Because of our generous donors, we manage to reach the schools in the remotest parts of Turkey and continue to give hope and deliver happiness..
Our teachers and students give us hope and make us keep going every time we hear from them. They open their hearts and send us the most meaningful gifts when they send us their letters and happy, hopeful photos..Every time they reach us they make us push the boundaries to reach out to more kids who are less fortunate but deserve a chance like any other kid in another part of the world.. And the dream lives on…
