Better Together: Local 212 Members Support Community Literacy Campaign

In summer of 2024, AFT Local 212 was awarded a $5000 book grant from AFT’s “Reading Opens the World” initiative. The funds have kickstarted a multiyear literacy campaign designed to support students, educators and families with culturally and linguistically relevant books to foster an ongoing love of reading. Unfortunately, literacy rates in our region are plummeting, and as this recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story indicates, this issue requires urgent community action. If this link does not work for you, please search the story "Northwest Milwaukee doctors to ‘prescribe’ kids trips to the library" by Kayla Huynh.

To date, we have donated over 1200 books through our own little free libraries, through book drops in the broader community, and through gifts of text sets to seed our Early Childhood Education students’ own classroom libraries.

At our spring semester kickoff event, AFT Local 212 members donated hundreds of books to help us continue to do our part. MATC little free libraries at Mequon, Downtown, Oak Creek, and West Allis recently received some of these.

This project, one that puts students and the community first, is another example of how Local 212 and MATC are “Better Together.”

If you would like to participate in little free library community book drops, stop by the AFT Local 212 office to pick up a Little Free Library “to go” bag and help supply a little free library near you or at any location in the region (see this interactive map).

For more information or to learn how you can volunteer, please contact Anna Varley: varleya@matc.edu