Jujube commences Community Outreach

Jujube Bookstore began its community outreach programme with a Christmas donation to the Paediatric Ward of the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.{{more}} This venture was a joint effort between the bookstore and its customers, who were invited during the month of December to make monetary donations towards the cause. The bookstore matched the customers’ donations and presented to the hospital a selection of children’s fiction and non-fiction titles to the tune of $500.

On Christmas Eve Day, Manager Michele Samuel and staff member Afranka Hackshaw-Graham visited the Paediatric Ward and presented the gifts to Staff Nurse Patricia Burke and Nursing Assistant Jacqueline Doyle. Staff Nurse Burke, in accepting the donation, thanked Jujube for its kind gesture and indicated that some of the books would be given to patients on their discharge and the remainder would be added to the library for the ongoing use of their patients. Jujube is grateful to its customers whose assistance went a long way towards helping to bring cheer to the little patients at the Paediatric Ward during the festive season.

The bookstore plans to make this drive ongoing, in an effort to spread joy and cheer throughout the year. The company will again solicit the support of its customers to make quarterly donations to various institutions throughout St Vincent & the Grenadines. Institutions earmarked to receive donations this year include the National Society of and for the Blind, and School for Children with Special Needs, Georgetown.

Jujube also runs a literacy campaign, which was launched in May last year. This campaign is three-pronged, involving weekly Reading Circles for children between the ages of three and ten, a Read Write Win Competition for secondary schools, jointly sponsored by Pearson, and a customer reward programme entitled Reading Counts. This year will see a revamping of the Read Write Win competition to encourage wider participation. Also on the cards this year is the execution of a pilot remedial reading programme.