During the week of September 25th, staff and volunteers worked together to distribute over 170,000 new children’s and adult books to more than 110 organizations throughout Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Texas as part of our Book Relief initiative.

This distribution was conducted out of Merchants Cold Storage warehouse in Hattiesburg, Mississippi — many thanks to these folks to making this distribution possible by donating this warehouse space and the generous time and energy of the staff! Over the course of this distribution, we officially reached three million books distributed through Book Relief.

We had about 12 great volunteers from the Mississippi Youth Challenge Program join our staff each day. They were all young men between the ages of 16 and 19, who pitched in to stage orders and load trucks. You can see a picture of our staff and volunteers below.

The local Channel 7 News aired a story about our work, and there was also an article in the Hattiesburg American. In addition to our success in Hattiesburg this time, the executives of Merchants Cold Storage continue to welcome us back for more Book Relief distributions. We look forward to seeing the amazing staff at the warehouse and wonderful locals in the community again soon.

     First Book volunteers and staff in Hattiesburg