Westfield church’s thrift store shares its blessings with 2 local nonprofits

November 1, 2024

By Amy Porter | The Westfield News | aporter@thereminder.com


WESTFIELD — On Oct. 31, Blessed Buys Thrift Shoppe celebrated its continued success with quarterly donations of $1,125 each to two local nonprofit agencies, Link to Libraries and the Amelia Park Children’s Museum.



Blessed Buys volunteer Carly Bannish said Link to Libraries, which is headquartered in Hampden, increases access to new books for elementary students both at school and at home.


Link to Libraries President and CEO Laurie Flynn said Westfield is the only one of the communities served by the nonprofit that engages every third and fourth grade in qualifying schools in the district, due to an active cadre of retired teachers like Bannish and Blessed Buys volunteer Cynthia Gaylord, who remain involved in the schools.


“Through our monthly volunteer Read Aloud program, we have 20 readers who read in 26 classrooms — all of the third and fourth grade classrooms in the schools. … These readers visit the classrooms once a month, share a story and discussion with the students, and we provide them with enough brand-new books so that each child can choose a book to take home and keep at the end of each visit. That means that by the end of the school year, each of these students will have a new home library of nine books,” Flynn said, adding that both Bannish and Gaylord are monthly volunteer readers.


The program, which was established in 2008, just gave out its 1 millionth volume to school libraries and to third and fourth graders all over Western Massachusetts, Bannish said.


“The funds we received today will ensure that Paper Mill Elementary receives hundreds of brand-new books for their library this year,” said Flynn. “We currently have sponsors for every elementary school in Westfield that meets our ‘needs’ requirement.”


Other sponsors include PeoplesBank supporting the program at Abner Gibbs Elementary School; Pay it Forward Recycling LLC at Franklin Avenue Elementary School; Westfield State University at Southampton Road Elementary School; and Kasperowski Family Dentistry at Highland Elementary School.


View Full Article on Masslive.com



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