Whitecaps Community Foundation to donate 300 books to GRPS Priority School Dickinson Academy

Comstock Park, MI – The Whitecaps Community Foundation will visit Dickinson Academy on March 30 to donate a new book to every child at the school.

Foundation board members, along with Whitecaps mascot Crash the River Rascal, will distribute the books to each child at Dickinson Academy, located at 448 Dickinson St. SE in Grand Rapids, tomorrow as part of a surprise school assembly at 10 a.m. Dickinson Academy is designated as a Priority School by the

The 300 total books are being donated as an extension of the Whitecaps Community Foundation’s Reading Club, an incentive-based program for grade-school children. Students who complete the reading objective of 15 minutes per day during March receive two free tickets to a West Michigan Whitecaps game. The reading club program began in 2003, and since then more than 276,000 tickets have been donated. In 2015, 87,000 children at 314 schools participated, earning 25,000 Whitecaps tickets.

This year the WCF is expanding the reach of the Reading Club by branching out in a second direction that focuses on the at-risk children in West Michigan, by providing books as an incentive to continue reading b
eyond the month of March. The Whitecaps Community Foundation, with the help of GRPS, selected Dickinson Academy as the pilot school to receive the donated books. GRPS selected two book titles per grade (K-8), for a total of 18 different titles. The WCF plans to expand the book donation program to more schools in 2017.

The Whitecaps Community Foundation is dedicated to enriching the lives of children, and by extension their families, by providing them with access to social, educational, and recreational programs that will have a positive impact on their futures. For more information, or to make a donation to the Foundation, please visit www.whitecapscommunityfoundation.org