On Tuesday, June 20th, New York Times Best Selling Author and acclaimed Actress, Grace Byers teamed up with her Saving Our Daughters organization and Everybody Wins! Atlanta, who hosted a Summertime StoryTime session for the campers at the Carver & Young YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta.
Grace read from her newest children’s book, I Believe I Can (released March 2020). Each student received a copy of the book and we inspired to create their personal I Believe I Can mural. When asked by 10 year old Kal’EL, (5th grader from Centennial Academy), what she would tell her 10 year old self, Grace stated “I would tell myself what I tell myself now, which is I am enough. I think it’s so easy for to forget that we are enough. You don’t have to do anything in order to earn your value or your worth as a person. Simply because you are alive, you are enough!”
The session concluded with the students inviting Grace to show off her dance skills and join their Zoom dance party.
According to Sharah Brown, Sr Dir of Youth and Teen Development YMCA, “the children truly enjoyed the experience today. I have never seen them so attentive and in awe of seeing Ms. Byers.”
“I am extremely pleased that we were able to share this experience with our students. Grace’s message is timely and serves as a reminded to our youth that they can achieve what they can believe and that they are important“, shared Tiffany Tolbert, Executive Director, Everybody Wins! Atlanta.
The SummerTime StoryTime program was sponsored by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.
Saving Our Daughters, a 501 c-3 organization which works with girls from multicultural backgrounds through theater, film, culinary and literacy, to help them to overcome the many obstacles they face growing up: bullying (cyber, gossip, face-to-face). Saving Our Daughters creates the tools as celebrity supported art programs, educate girls beyond the borders of a traditional classroom.
Everybody Wins! Atlanta, Founded in 1997, Everybody Wins! Atlanta is a local non-profit organization that pairs elementary school students at risk for academic failure with caring mentors who spend one-on-one time reading with them for thirty minutes each week for an entire school year. The program currently serves low-income public elementary school students in the Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Atlanta public school systems, and is funded through grants and corporate and private donations. The organization also offers StoryTime, bringing professional performers, authors and storytellers into schools to use their creative talents to expose children to the world of literacy through action of the written word and audience participation. In 2015, they created a monthly Corporate Reading Day program which brings corporate volunteers to local schools in small group and classroom reading sessions. www.everybodywinsatlanta.org