The Town of Chapel Hill recently installed its latest Little Free Library at the corner of Billie Holiday Court and Eastwood Road.

Chapel Hill partnered with the Busy Bees Volunteer Service Corps, Inc to begin installing Little Free Libraries in public housing communities throughout town. The first library within the partnership was installed in the Pritchard Park housing community off Pritchard Avenue Extension.

Little Free Library is global nonprofit committed to expanding library access to all. The libraries are small, wooden boxes functioning on an honor system where readers take and leave books. Anyone can take or leave books.

(Photo via Town of Chapel Hill)

Michelle Laws, founder of the Busy Bee Volunteer Service Corps, said the project was meaningful to her.

“As a child growing up in the Pritchard Park public housing community, reading provided me a way to escape and venture into worlds beyond the boundaries of my community,” Laws said in a release. “I got my first library card while living in Newark, NJ, with my mom, and the library was the only place I could go without her (other than to the homes of family members).  My mom fully understood that reading proficiency was fundamental to my educational success and to opening many doors for me. I want other children growing up in low-income families and communities to have books available to them so that they, too, can learn the joys of reading.”

Members of the Chapel Hill Police Department helped construct the latest Little Free Library.

Little Free Library at the corner of Billie Holiday Court and Eastwood Road (Photo via Town of Chapel Hill)

“We are thankful to Michelle Laws and the Busy Bees Volunteer organization for creating Little Free Libraries within our public housing communities so that local residents, especially our youth, can have new ways to access books and to share their love of reading with their neighbors,” Hemminger said.

Featured photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.


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