Vestavia Belles dedicate summer hours to the Library in the Forest

Summer at the Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest is a living example that reading is still alive in our tech world. Over 3,000 area children signed up to participate in the yearly Summer Reading Program and almost 15,000 children’s books were checked out each month during June and July. Programs were planned Monday through Friday for children of all ages and weekly prizes were given out to any child who came into the library and signed up for the program. 

The Vestavia Belles were a big part of the program’s success. For the past three years, Belles Director Rita Greene has made the Library in the Forest one of the major volunteer projects for the group. They signed up in May to commit eight hours each to the library during the months of June and July, totaling almost 400 hours at the library. They helped in the children’s department with signing up kids for the Summer Reading Program, as well as giving out prizes and assisting with crowd control during big programs. 

This year, the Vestavia Belles were responsible for running the Library Lab. Every day from 10 a.m. to 12p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., they helped any child who wished to participate with the weekly hands-on science experiment. They showed the kids how the experiment worked, guided them as they performed the experiment and helped them understand the science behind it.

“These girls show up every day, Monday through Friday, and work two shifts to help us out. We really would not be able to handle the volume of attendees we have without the help of this organization,” said Children’s Department Head April Moon.

--Submitted by April Moon