~ Our award winning Rewards for Reading Program is now in 20 Jefferson Parish schools. When a child reads a book and passes a test on it, he or she receives a ticket for a drawing to win amazing prizes at our awards assembly. We do them twice a year at each school and bring our member mascots, Boudreaux from the N.O. Zephyrs and Katie the Duck from Acadian Plumbing. (You can come too. It is something everyone should experience!)

To date, we have given as incentives to read… over 400 new bikes, 350,000 Baby Cakes Baseball passes worth over $250,000, over 200,000 AMF Bowling “free game” passes (many good for 4 children to bowl two free games per day for the entire summer), 240,000 passes to Adventure Quest Lazer Tag, 120,000 free buffets from CiCi’s Pizza, 8,000 kid’s meals from Raising Canes, 8,000 Domino’s “free” Pizza cards, 800 Dot’s Diner certificates, 400 MP4 Players, plus many more.

And Most Important: The Children in our schools have read well over 1 Million books! And their grades have gone up dramatically!

REWARDS FOR READING "NUMBERS”

Here are the numbers for May 2017:

Numbers in every school has grown this year, and we are looking at about 13,000 students in the 20 schools.

The boys and girls read over 130,000 books from Dec. until May!

Here is what was given away:

71 new bikes

90 MP4 players

1,000 certificates for free appetizer or a free dessert from Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers

250 certificates from McDonald's for a free package of Apple Slices

100 free medium breakfast, lunch or diner extra value meals from McDonalds

250 free "icedream" or cookies from Chick-fil-a

500 free ice cream cones from Rally's or Checker's Restaurants

6,000 discount books from Papa John's Pizza

500 free bowling passes from AMF All Star Lanes in Kenner

600 free kids combo's from Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers

600 free large pizzas from RPM/Domino's Pizza

13,000 free pizza buffets from CiCi's Pizza

13,000 free baseball coupons from our Triple A Baseball Baby Cakes

20 special certificates for 4 to Baby Cakes baseball

13,000- 2 for 1 certificates from Adventure Quest Laser Tag

100 "Aztec" passes good for 8 free games at Adventure Quest Laser Tag

300 free one game certificates from Adventure Quest Laser Tag

200 free passes to Laser Tag of Metairie

400 large 10 color ink pens from Cox Communications

20 basketballs from the Sun Belt Conference Basketball Tournament

500 pencils from Papa John's

600 certificates for "free" spa treatment for three days at Planet Beach in Kenner (teachers)

50 certificates for one full month of spa treatment from Planet Beach(teachers)

40 gift baskets for teachers with spices, coffee, tea, Dot's Diner Certificates, etc.

20 TV Reading pillows from Katie the Duck and Acadian Plumbing

We had great support!

Besides many Dawn Busters Kiwanis members we had at least two mascots at every school and 10 times we had three! They were Katie the Duck from Acadian Plumbing (19 times), Boudreaux from the Baby Cakes (17 times), Cpt. K-9 from the Kenner Police Department (7 times) and Ronald McDonald from McDonalds (3 times).

Thanks to our many sponsors and everyone who helped make each event spectacular!

Feeding the homeless at Lantern Light

Committee Chair - Butch Diaz, 504-813-7504

~ Every Monday we provide and serve hot meals to the homeless. Located behind St. Joseph’s Church on Tulane in New Orleans, we have provided over 50,000 hot meals to men, women and children in need.

Children’s Hospital & Ochsner Hospital Surgery Dolls

Committee Chair - Dot Charlet, 504-885-6212

~ Over 2000 dolls are hand made every year. These dolls are given to children to take with them through their entire hospital stay. The doctors use the dolls to show and explain to the children what they are doing and then the children get to take the dolls home to continue to comfort them through their recovery.