by Cara Baker Davis
Belmont’s 21st annual Family Literacy Day celebrates reading for children in pre-K through Grade 6 and their families in the Edgehill neighborhood. During this event, held on April 1 at the Easley Community Center, participants enjoyed reading circles hosted by campus organizations and games, crafts, treats, door prizes, balloons, and face painting. Through participation in the reading circles, event-goers earned stickers for a book of their choice courtesy of Book’em.
The Family Literacy Day event is one example of Belmont Volunteers for Literacy program’s efforts to be an active leader in literacy promotion across Nashville, which involves ongoing tutoring at the Carter-Lawrence School, Easley Community Center, and the Nashville Adult Literacy Council.
Student volunteers earned service-learning credits through the class Teamwork and Organizations led by Joel Hester.
Mary Margaret Jones, a freshman social entrepreneurship major, said the day was the culmination of a semester of hard work: “I’ve enjoyed seeing everybody’s hard work come together because there were like five groups for our individual class and then we all had different parts of the larger team. So it’s been interesting to see how all of our roles kind of merged for today.”
Freshman Daniel Quartararo described the class as fun and engaging: “You have a lot of opportunity to put your opinion in and see where it goes.”
“It’s great to see all the families that have come in with their kids that are really excited to read and really excited to pick a book when they leave,” said Freshman Carly DeMartino.
