Sometimes all it takes to help change one’s community is to pay attention to some of the people in it. Senior Jenny Nguyen knows all about this. After noticing one elementary student from her hometown struggle with reading and realizing he had no books at home to read, Nguyen started the Little Bookworms program.

In her own words, “Little Bookworms is a service project that I started that collects new or gently used books for underprivileged children to read.” Currently in its third year of activity, Little Bookworms has collected 1600 books for children in the Lowndes County area. For this current collection period, MSMS has teamed up with Caledonia High School, New Hope High School and Heritage Academy.

It all started when Nguyen was tutoring at a local elementary school. “There was this one student that just absolutely struggled with reading on his own level, and so I asked him ‘Do you have any books at home?’ and he said ‘No, ma’am, I don’t.’”

Access to books is a subject that is close to home for Nguyen. “I grew up reading so many books, I couldn’t imagine my childhood without them. That afternoon, I sat down and I thought ‘What can I do to help this kid and kids like him?’”

Nguyen plans on attending the University of Pennsylvania, and she says that she hopes to continue the program there.

“I know that in the greater Philadelphia area there’s gonna be kids that don’t have the resources at home to improve their reading level,” Nguyen said.

The official collecting period for Little Bookworms is April 24 to 28. If you would like to donate books, collection boxes are in Goen and Frazer halls as well as in the schools listed above.