Creating new literacy opportunities
A Montana Kiwanis club turns trash into reading treasure.
By Julie Saetre
“Education and literacy” is one of the three Kiwanis causes, and the Silver Bow, Butte, Kiwanis Club in Montana, U.S., found a creative way to bring kids and books together — while helping the environment.
It started when Kiwanis International Trustee Cathy Tutty, a member of the club, purchased a house that came with an unwanted leftover: an old, nonfunctioning refrigerator taking up valuable space in the garage.
“I thought, ‘What can we do with it?’” says Tutty. “I didn’t want to just take it to the landfill.”
Doug Ingraham, a fellow club member who works at an asbestos abatement business, volunteered to remove the refrigerator’s freon if a purpose could be found for the appliance. Tutty had an idea: Transform the refrigerator into a freestanding “book box” — and place it in her front yard.
After the freon and the refrigerator’s seal were removed, club members painted the refrigerator in “Kiwanis blue.” Then Tutty visited the elementary school just two blocks from her home and asked the librarian whether any of the students would be willing to help personalize the former fridge.
“There were four groups of them,” Tutty says. “We got some nontoxic paint, and they put all these different-colored handprints on it.”
The school also happened to be getting a number of new books for the library and donated the older books to Tutty for the box. And when another refrigerator became available from a neighbor’s estate, she decided to create a second book box for a local affordable-housing apartment complex.
Partnership power
At the time, the Montana District of Circle K International (the Kiwanis service program for college and university students) was in Butte, holding its annual Fall Rally. The CKI members took on fridge-painting duties as a service project. Now the box is available 24/7 outside the apartment complex office.
“All of that got Doug thinking, ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to get books,’” Tutty says.
At the time, Scholastic — a large publishing and education company — was awarding one “book desert” grant to each state in the U.S., with a goal of expanding children’s access to reading material. Ingraham applied and received the grant for Montana, gaining access to 1,000 books and an official Little Free Library. He placed that library halfway between a high school and an affordable-housing community.
Tutty occasionally supplements the book supply with additional purchases from Scholastic.
“Every so often, I’ll buy US$300 worth of books when they have a special going on,” she says, “because you get 20 free books for every $150 you spend. So then I end up with 40 more books.”
As for the box in Tutty’s front yard, she also stocks it with fruit snacks and small bubble blowers in the summer and sports drinks when the weather is cool — adding incentives for kids to stop by and grab a book.
“It’s fun,” she says. “People say, ‘You have a refrigerator in your yard?’”
Has your club gotten creative when supporting education and literacy? Let us know! Email shareyourstory@kiwanis.org.
