United Way of Coweta County and student interns with the Teacher Pipeline program at the Central Education Center (CEC) in Newnan delivered 250 copies of Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to Coweta County elementary schools and daycare centers last week as part of the nationwide “Read for the Record” event.

“United Way in Coweta County is very excited to join Dr. Susan Mullins and CEC’s Teacher Pipeline again this year in Read for the Record,” said Paige Sport, project director of the local United Way office. “The event is tremendously empowering for children who actually participate in breaking a world record, in addition to sharing the same book at the same time with children from Asia to Africa to Australia.”

Last year was the first year the United Way and the teacher interns organized a Coweta event by donating copies of the children’s story “Corduroy” to schools and reading it to over 5,000 Coweta County children in one day.

“Read for the Record represents an amazing opportunity for the entire community from pre-schoolers through retirees to join together in an effort to raise awareness of the importance of early childhood literacy,” said Sport.

The local United Way office has provided 10 copies of “Caterpillar” for each elementary school, and for several local private schools and daycare centers. Volunteers, including Pipeline interns, retired teachers and other community volunteers, read the book at the schools, particularly to younger grades.

Coweta County School System’s Future Educators Association chapters in middle and high schools and the McIntosh Trail Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa International co-sponsored the event.

Read for the Record is organized each year to raise public awareness about the importance of childhood literacy. Thousands of schools, libraries and daycare centers nationwide participated in Read for the Record in an attempt to break a world record by reading the same story to over 1 million children in one day.

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