An Interview With Mackenzie Bearup!
Another hotel room bed, another interview! This one was twice as fun because not only is Mackenzie an amazing person who is making a huge difference in the world, she’s also my niece! She’s in town to be honored by CNN, as they host a gala event “CNN Heroes: everyday people changing the world!” live tomorrow night, to be aired Thanksgiving Night. She was nominated as one of their heroes, and while she didn’t become one of their top 10, she’s number one to me!
So you may be asking yourself, what did Mackenzie to do be nominated for a CNN hero award?
According to her website, Sheltering Books:
Since 2007 Mackenzie Bearup has been collecting women and children’s books and donating them to homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and residental treatment centers that house children.. As of September 2010 Mackenzie has delivered over 47,000 books to the various shelters.
A recent study predicts that 1 in 50 children in the US will be homeless at sometime in their life. Many of them will end up in a shelter often with just the clothes on their backs.Mackenzie started this book drive after learning about a residental treatment center that was building a library. She decided to donate books she no longer needed to help these children. Then she asked friends and neighbors if they had books to donate, and her book drive took off from there.
Mackenzie recently formed a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) called Sheltering Books Inc. so your donations will be tax deductable.
For her amazing charitable work, she has been acknowledged by CNN, the Huffington Post, and many other news and philanthropist organizations. Diddy even gave her a shout out!
I was thrilled to be able to see her again and spend some time talking about Sheltering Books and her chronic pain condition, RSD, that started her thinking of how to help others and get her mind off the daily pain she lives with.
At 17, she runs Sheltering Books with help from her mom, BethAnn. Together they are a force! Right now the book donations are rolling in, giving many women and children the chance to read in shelters that have very little. Right now, Mackenzie and BethAnn not only accept the donations at their house, they also drive to pick up donations and also drive to drop off the donated books to shelters all across 6 states. They have also started shipping books to shelters that they cannot drive to. The boxes are heavy and cost money to ship. They are hoping USPS will grant them free shipping since they are a non profit company…if anyone out there has connections with USPS, let me know and it would be great to help them achieve that! They are so generous with their time and money to make sure that all the donated books find shelters that desperately need resources like that. They are also spreading awareness, even to the shelters they’re helping. One shelter, when asked if they could use donated books, replied back, “Books?! These kids don’t read!”
They rely solely on monetary donations to provide the cost of gas, shipping, and travel to do their work. They have plenty of books coming in, so if you’d like to help out in other ways, go to shelteringbooks.org, there is a ‘donate’ button at the bottom of the page, and any paypal donations you make will be tax deductible.
You can also find her on facebook: Sheltering Books
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