Milk + Bookies Hosts Annual Literacy Fundraiser in Culver City

CULVER CITY, CA -- Milk + Bookies, a local nonprofit that helps get books to kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them, is hosting its annual fundraiser in Culver City next weekend.

The annual fundraiser, “Story Time Celebration,” will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 26 at HD Buttercup in Culver City

Notable participants will include Adam Scot, Tiffani Theissen, Charlie Day, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Greg Grunberg, Julie Bowen, Katie Aselton and Mark Duplass, Mark Feuerstein, Norbert (the dog), Lindsay Sloane, Tom Everett Scott, David Walton and others.

More than fifteen years ago, as a new mom, Milk + Bookies founder and executive director Meredith Alexander, didn’t want to spend every weekend going to birthday parties and soccer games with her kids. She said was hungry for more meaningful and impactful experiences with her small children, experiences that would reinforce the values that their family feels strongly about, such as giving back and reading.

In 2004, she decided it would be fun to throw a party, which she named “Milk + Bookies,” at a local children’s bookstore, Storyopolis, and invited all their friends with kids. There were milk and cookies and story readings, hence the name. Once there, the children were all asked to choose a book that they would want to give to a local child without any bedtime stories.

They then asked the young guests to inscribe a bookplate -- most of the kids could only scribble with a crayon, Alexander said -- stick it in the book and then drop that book into a box for a local recipient group.

“When the bookstore’s cashier had a 30-minute wait to buy books,” Alexander said. “I knew I was on to something good and that other families were looking for these kinds of experiences as well.”

Four years later, after hosting Milk + Bookies parties biannually, Alexander said she knew it was time to grow. She brought on two of her friends to create the board of directors, they applied for a 501(c)3 tax exempt status, built a website, created models for birthday parties, class projects and community service hours.

Over the past 12 years, through her dedication and hard work, Alexnader said she has grown Milk + Bookies into a hugely successful force for change in education. The national “Book-Raiser” program has since helped raise more than 400,000 books, impacting 141,000 children in over 600 Title I schools and in-need organizations nationwide.

Alexander said after seeing firsthand the extent of Los Angeles’ literacy problem, she took action and piloted a school-to-school book drive program called Leaders + Readers. The Leaders + Readers Program is designed to engage student volunteers in the Los Angeles community to organize school-wide book drives that will in turn benefit another LA "sister" school in a low-income community.

The goal of every Leaders + Readers book drive is to flood underserved school libraries, classroom libraries and student’s homes with the books needed to support learning and academic excellence.

At its core, Milk + Bookies is founded on the principle of teaching young children just how important it is to give back to others.

“We’ve found a simple but effective way to harness the innate goodness in children, and then use it to impact lasting change on our community,” Alexander said.

Tickets to the "Story Time Celebration" are $100 a person and are available here.

-- Photo courtesy of Milk + Bookies