By Jenni Plaskett
LSW FBLA Member

The Lee’s Summit West Future Business Leaders of America Chapter completed a Community Service Project titled “Love to Read, Learn to Lead, Prepare to Succeed” led by FBLA members Lina Elkishawi, Ryann Elliff, and Jenni Plaskett. The project took place for two weeks over Valentine’s Day so they wanted to incorporate their love for reading into the project concept. The main goal for the project was to promote literacy in order to build leaders in the Lee’s Summit and Kansas City metro community. FBLA teamed up with two elementary schools in Lee’s Summit, Longview Farm Elementary and Cedar Creek Elementary to get kids to donate new, or gently used, books which we then donated to Literacy KC. Literacy KC is a local organization that promotes education and helps teach both adults and children the fundamentals of reading, writing, and other topics. The grade that collected the most books at each elementary school, won a free night at SkyZone in Lee’s Summit. At Longview Farm Elementary 5th grade won and at Cedar Creek Elementary 4th grade won. Between the two schools a total of 4,360 books were collected and donated to Literacy KC, in order to promote reading to those in need of books, across the Kansas City metro. A large amount of homes will be effected by the amount of books donated and we are very grateful for both elementary schools that participated.

The second piece we incorporated into this project was reading during Kids Country at the two elementary schools during these two weeks. FBLA members signed up to read to children to show the importance of giving back to the community but also to promote literacy. The LSW FBLA Chapter also got involved in helping create the boxes for the book drive. It was a whole chapter effort and very successful.