LYNN — Metro Credit Union awarded a $10,000 grant to The REAL Program’s Little Free Library initiative at an awards breakfast in Chelsea Friday morning.
“This was a significant grant to be used for our initiative to install 250 Little Free Libraries throughout the city to provide access to children’s books all day long, all night long, seven days a week,” said Jan Plourde, executive director of The Real Program. “With 100,000 plus people, the public library isn’t going to do that.”
The REAL Program’s Little Free Libraries initiative began in 2018 and has been distributing books since 2013.
Plourde said that more than 300,000 children’s books have been collected and distributed over the past 10 years.
“What we’re doing here in Lynn is that we’re focusing on children’s books,” Plourde said. “What happens in Lynn, where illiteracy is a big problem, we have found that most of our Little Libraries, we could fill them three or four times a week. When people tell me that children are not interested in books, it’s not the children who are not interested in books.”
About 70 Little Free Libraries are already installed throughout Lynn, with another 140 built and ready to be installed.
“Where we’re needing the most help right now is not in building and painting,” Plourde said. “Lots of organizations and all kinds of different communities have all gotten involved in that. We have no lack of children’s books right now.”
She explained that the bulk of the grant money will be used to install new Little Free Libraries all around the city.
During winter, installation of any outdoor Little Free Libraries is tricky, so the organization focuses on indoor installations this winter.
“We have some that will be installed in the winter because they’ll be lobbies of businesses, including the Western Avenue branch of Metro Credit Union,” Plourde said.
Also, to avoid getting a Dig Safe inspection for every outdoor installation, the group will get creative with the installations.
Plourde said that the plan is to put the boxes on 4×4 posts that are sunk into 5-gallon buckets of cement, which could then be placed in planters.
She expressed her appreciation for Metro Credit Union’s support.
“We would very much like to thank Metro Credit Union for its community focus,” she said. “We need more people like Metro Credit Union and the people of Metro Credit Union to be supporting our effort and others who are doing similar kinds of work in Lynn.”
