Summer Reading With a Purpose

With Memorial Day unofficially kicking off Summer last weekend and only 10 more school days left and counting, we have been thinking a lot about summer activities and how we want to spend summer vacation.

Earlier this week while reading the girls' Clubhouse Magazine we read about their summer reading challenge, Read to Raise the Roof and the girls immediately knew they wanted to take part.
 The challenge is sponsored by Focus on the Family and the money raised by the children getting pledges for each page they read during the challenge will be used to build a ministry outreach center in Rwanda. Among many other things, the outreach center will provide impoverished and orphaned children with food and shelter, Biblical teaching, school uniforms for young orphans (the uniforms are required for school attendance and many families simply cannot afford them, and thus their children are not being educated) and vocational training for older orphans so they can begin to support themselves. It was startling to hear that many of the children in this area of Rwanda eat only once a day and most of their day consists of gathering wood and clean water for their current kitchen that looks much more like a fire pit than an actual place where food can be prepared and served. This ministry would help to change that.

More information and a short video about this summer reading program is here. I can't imagine any better motivation to keep logging pages over the summer than knowing we are helping children in need.