Give me an R! Give me an E! Give me an A! Give me a D! READ!!
Do you love to read? Most Virtual Assistants do; I think it’s part of our nature. Here at VALeague, we are passionate about literacy. We’d be willing to bet that you are, too.
That is why we are passionate about Dewey’s Read-A-Thon, coming up on Saturday, October 22. You can read more about it at http://24hourreadathon.com. What is a Read-a-Thon? Simple. For 24 hours we read books, post to our blogs about what we are reading, and visit other readers’ blogs or the Read-A-Thon’s blog to encourage and cheer other readers on. We also participate in mini-challenges throughout the day. These mini-challenges will be posted on the Read-a-Thon website on a regular basis throughout the 24 hour period. The most important part of the Read-a-Thon is that we will be soliciting donations to Reading Is Fundamental or to your local literacy program.
The idea is for everyone participating, all across the globe, to be reading during the same 24 hour period. Listed on he Read-A-Thon’s website are the start times for every time zone. You can check out the start time for your time zone here http://24hourreadathon.com/start-times/. Here in the CST time zone, for instance, we will be starting at 7:00 am on Saturday, October 22 and reading for 24 hours until 7:00 am on Sunday, October 23. Now I know what you’re thinking – “How in the world can I read for 24 hours straight? I need to sleep. I have to eat. I have ‘stuff’ to do.” The answer is simple. We create teams. You may read for the first four hours, then pass the virtual baton to the next team member who reads for the next four hours. That team member then passes the baton to the next, etc. Your team can have as many members on it as you like. Do you have kids? Perfect! What an opportunity to instill into them the love of reading. Try reading their books to them during your reading time. Your entire family can be a team. Wondering where to find a team? No problem. Send an email to Jaclyn Croft at Jaclyn@croftvs.com and let her know you want to be on a team and how much time you think you will be able to read during that period. We will put you on a team of other Virtual Assistants who also want to participate. How awesome would it be to have several teams of Virtual Assistants participating in something like this?
Want to up the ante a little? Great. How about a contest. We will be offering a prize to the person who reads the most minutes AND another prize to the person who does the most mini-challenges. All you need to do is comment here AND send an email to Jaclyn at Jaclyn@croftvs.com by no later than Wednesday, October 26. Let her know how many minutes you read, how many mini-challenges you participated in, and how much money you were able to donate to your organization of choice. Jaclyn will track the information and we will announce the winners right here on our blog. What are the prizes? Well, what else but Amazon gift cards, of course!
Worried about what to read to keep from falling asleep? No problem. We will be posting ideas here so stay tuned for more details. Wondering how to get people to donate? We’ll be talking about that here, too. So put on your thinking caps and figure out how you can participate. And add the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon to your calendar for October 22.
