An Appeal for Book Donations

Today I received a surprising email from Amy Goodrich, the PTO President of Oakland Park School in Streator, Illinois.

Mrs Tardif

Today, I am writing to you on behalf of Oakland Park School PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) located in Streator Illinois. I am not sure if this is the place to be writing to you about this request, but here it goes.

This is the second year that we have been working together to enhance our traditional 20 year old playground equipment to include access and usability for all children in our community.

At present time, we have many children who because of disability limitations are not able to access our equipment or any other playground equipment in our community and must stay in their wheelchairs on the sideline watching the other children at play. We would like our project to benefit children with and without disabilities by providing opportunities for all children to play together side by side.

The playground that we are working towards is called a "Boundless playground" it will cost over $45,000 (as much as a home in our town). Our PTO has raised less than half the funds needed, but we know that we will get this done with others help.

I thought maybe you could help our mission a bit. Our school is 80% low income, but were we lack funds, we make up for in community spirit!

This December, we will be hosting our third fundraising craft fair with silent auction.

We will have theme baskets set up for people from our communities and other communities to "bid" on. This year, we would like to make at least one if not 3 "Author baskets" My goal is to have a basket directed toward men, woman and children. A basket for each filled with autographed books, author tid bits or what ever items an author would like to send to be included in the basket.

You are the first few authors that I have written to, with hopefully many more to follow.

If you could please help us by donating an item to our Author basket that would be wonderful, or if you can't that is fine, but maybe you could pass on this information to other Authors or other interested persons who might be interested in become a part of our mission.

Thank you for your consideration

Amy Goodrich,
Oakland Park k-5 PTO President
701 S. Sterling St (school address),
Streator IL 61364

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From Cheryl: After carefully checking out Ms. Goodrich and contacting the Oakland Park School principal (Mr. Ryan Bemont) directly, I can assure that this is a worthwhile cause, and I will be donating 6 books. I am appealing to other authors (from Canada, the US or elsewhere) to consider donating a book or two to this school, so they can raise the funds necessary to build this desperately needed playground. This is a worthwhile venture!!!

Proposed playground: (restructured from 20-year-old existing playground that is currently not wheelchair friendly).

Book donations can be sent to the following address. Please include a brief note stating that the book (s) is for the PTO fundraiser.

Oakland Park School c/o PTO
701 S Sterling St
Streator IL, USA 61364