VANEL’s Little Green Influencers Gardening & Craft Groups (LGI) are run from each of the seven Family Hubs across North East Lincolnshire. Recently, those who attend their weekly sessions at one of the hubs, took part in a ‘Sponsored Shared Ready Steady Read’ to promote a lifelong love of reading.
VANEL and our LGI groups are keen to promote that a love of reading is the best gift we can give to our children as it enables them grow and bloom for the rest of their lives.
To celebrate and encourage a lifelong love of reading at home and alongside World Book Day (6th March), we invited our Little Green Influencers to join us in a Sponsored Shared Ready Steady Read Event between Monday 10th February and Thursday 6th March 2025.
The groups managed to raise an incredible £249.70 in total (which included a percentage donated from Usborne).
The event was organised in conjunction with our local Usborne Partner, Liam Chapman, and all the money raised has been invested in brand new books for our end of term thank you gift books to all the Little Green Influencers for not only our Spring Term, but Summer and Autumn Terms too.
We even had enough money to donate towards the Usborne FREE Easter Book Trail in Cleethorpes (17th to 24th April), which we promoted to all our groups to encourage getting out during the Easter Break.
Overall the book event was a great success and engaged many young children and their families with a love of reading.
We look forward to being involved in future events to help get the groups ready for their life adventures.
As well as this successful one-off book event, VANEL has also been delivering some Interactive Storytime sessions. These have been held weekly at two of the family hubs and again the sessions are aimed at encouraging children to love books and learning to read.
Each one hour session is aimed at children aged 2-4 (accompanied by parents, carers or childminders). Sessions include a story, that sometimes involves a Story Sack or other interactive props. The children then go onto join in a fun craft session that is also based on the story. The sessions generally end with the children singing some action songs or playing games.
Another great series of sessions to help encourage this love of books and reading.
This is a very different angle to delivery of support from VANEL and one that has arisen over the years as we continue to deliver our Green Influencers programme. Green Influencers has gone from strength to strength working with children, schools, families and more to engage with the environment. Extending to bring in books and reading was a natural progression, and whilst this is not part of a formal programme, we hope to continue with this sort of support going forward.
More about Green Influencers in future blogs. Any questions please contact Sam Smith (sam@vanel.org.uk). Follow the Green Influencers Facebook page for many more updates.
Keep an eye on the Big Local Facebook page for details of events and activities we’re running related to books!
