A young man’s love of reading has become a long-running campaign to encourage literacy in Yorkton area youth. The Brayden Ottenbreit Memorial Book Fund is now looking for entries to determine where the books go for the next donation.
Leone Ottenbreit says that the fund began at Brayden’s funeral, with a request that people donate books to people of their choice, to reflect the passions of the boy himself.
“Brayden had developed quite a love of books, especially when he was hospitalized, because a lot of his tests and such would mean he would he would have to stay still or have to be entertained during the procedure... During his final months with us at home, we had a lot of friends and family drop off books, because basically he was bedridden for that final month, so we had spent a lot of reading then as well. We thought, what better tribute to him would be to promote literacy and allow other children to enjoy books.”
Over the years the fund has donated to different programs in schools and has replaced the books lost in the flood at the Yorkton Public Library. The fund is supported by the Yorkton Kinsmen, supplying $500 annually, supporting the program since the beginning. Ottenbreit thanks them for providing their ongoing support to the program.
Right now they are looking for programs in the city which could use books. Programs which need support can submit a 500 word essay detailing why they need books for their programming in the month of October.
“We encourage people to think outside the box... We want to promote literacy, we want to promote a love of reading for children and families... We will never say we only want to support one kind of initiative, we really want people to think about what they need... We’re not limited to schools and classroom, any groups, any organizations, any clubs, if they can present their case to us we’ll definitely take it into consideration.”
The preference is for programming towards children, Ottenbreit says, but if a case can be made that the program promotes family literacy, she says that it’s something they would look into. She uses the example of an English as a second language class as a way they might stretch their mandate, because it would be a way to promote family literacy.
All essays can be submitted to [email protected] before the deadline of October 31. Anyone needing an alternate way to submit is invited to call Ottenbreit at 306-621-5295.
