Nanny Beth Lehmann is once again bringing the children of NY books, with her Bedtime Stories Book Drive. You can help Beth by donating books from her Amazon Wish List to this endeavor.
We first profiled Beth back in July 2011, but with her 2013 Campaign, we wanted to share her story with you again.
Nannies Giving Back is one of our features here on Regarding Nannies. We like to spotlight nannies who are giving back to their community in unique ways. Today we are talking with Beth Lehman who volunteers with an organization in New York City called New York Cares
Can you tell us a little bit about the volunteer work that you do within your community?
I have been volunteering for ten years this summer. I currently lead 2 projects.
Urban Adventures which is a program where we take under privilege children from low income housing on monthly field trips.
The children earn merits by doing well in school, participating in an after school program and completing their homework daily.
If you ask the children “what would you be doing to day if you were not on the trip?” the answer is “watching tv or playing video games”.
They can’t go outside and play as they live in unsafe neighborhoods with drugs and guns. Our program introduces the children to a life outside of their neighborhood. We do a variety of field trips. A few of the projects we have recently done are salsa dancing, hall of science, corn field maze, ice skating, Bounce U(indoor inflatable bouncing gym), architecture scavenger hunt, canoeing and row boats with an outdoor BBQ.
Bedtime Stories is my other primary project. This project takes place in a family homeless shelter. We run a weekly program here. Most of the children have been bounced around during their young lives. Most are behind in school. With this project we work with the children 1:1 or 1:2 and give then the undivided attention they deserve. The volunteers and I work on reading basics. We read for about half of the program then do art projects, play games, have musicians come in and sing, or doing a cooking project.
We try to get kids to see how important reading is and it is not only in books.