Panhellenic members give more than 100 community service hours annually to the Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) program at Spring Branch Elementary School through Partners In Education.
Funds exceeding $1,000 are donated every year to the school library, enabling hundreds of students to receive free books.
Panhellenic women assist in the distribution of these books, reading to the children, and volunteering their time as needed.
For the 2024-2025 year, HAPA has voted to work with the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation.
For more information, please see the note from the Community Service Chair below:
Each year HAPA’s Community Service Committee is responsible for collecting a $50 donation from each sorority, the funds of which are to used to purchase books for elementary school children, traditionally within the Spring Branch School District, to further the cause of literacy in young children. With the closing of school libraries in so many elementary schools these days along with the dismissal of school librarians, many young “at risk” children are now left without books to check out and take home to read. This makes our “Reading Is Fundamental” literacy program (established by our HAPA by-laws) even more critically important and indispensable.
As most of you are aware, trying to continue our RIF program in one of Houston’s Spring Branch Schools over the past few years has become increasingly difficult because of the current nation-wide ban on many books within school libraries. This has led to elementary school principals to not allow our organization to enter their schools to read to the children or interact with them in any way, as we were allowed to in years past.
Therefore, as Chair of this year’s Community Service Project I sought out a different route for us to support our literacy mission and allow us to have some reasonable contact with a Spring Branch school and children to meet our mission of helping young school children achieve literacy. To this end, I contacted the Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation here in Houston and asked if we could partner with them by providing a donation of funds each year so that they could purchase additional books for elementary school children under their “My Home Library” program. Our HAPA volunteers are warmly encouraged to come and assist the children in selecting their books during the BBLF’s Book Bonanza Event, to be held next Spring 2025, which furthers our mission by allowing us to participate in this literacy program.
HAPA has voted to make Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation’s “My Home Library” program as our new Community Service partner to help us promote HAPA’s mission to promote literacy in our elementary schools for the 2024-2025 year.
