When University of Pittsburgh Social Work student and Boston native Shawna Kaplan started her internship with JFCS Youth Services’ Bridge Builders program in August, she knew she wanted to make a difference in the lives of the refugee youth. She first heard about JFCS’s work through her Jewish community in Pittsburgh and decided to apply to intern there. One of her first tasks was to enroll refugee students in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which gives children access to free books. “As I was visiting clients, I realized that a lot of families didn’t have books in their homes,” Shawna explained. She started thinking of ways they could help get more books into the clients’ hands.
After a brainstorming session, Shawna and the rest of the refugee youth team landed on the idea of a book club for the students. Shawna and the youth team decided to host a book drive with local bookstore Stories Like Me. The team chose an array of books that featured diverse characters and would be easy enough for English language learners to read. The book drive kicked off with an event at the bookstore where one of the refugee youth read an excerpt of a book out loud.
“We wanted the kids to feel represented in the books,” Shawna said. “A lot of the books are about a new kid starting at a new school; a lot of the kids have had this experience.” She continued, “Books like The Day You Begin are about immigrant students who moved from another country and started a new life. Those are stories these kids can relate to.”
The book drive brought in 100 books which were given out to 17 families, each of which has multiple children who participate in Bridge Builders. The book club, which launched in January, has made it easier for students to follow along with reading lessons at home, using an actual book versus a digital copy. “The kids really enjoy it,” Shawna said. “Their reading is already improving.” She contributes much of that to having physical books in the home to use.
Bridge Builders students are given a reading assessment at the beginning and end of each school year to help measure the program’s success. Shawna hopes that the data will prove what she has already been seeing anecdotally with many of the students—that their reading and English language skills are quickly improving. “A student I work with one-on-one grew tremendously just over winter break in his ability to identify more words on the page,” she explained. She also mentioned that students at the local elementary school Bridge Builders works in have also progressed faster in reading and speaking English. “The ultimate goal of this book club is to promote literacy,” Shawna said.
As she wraps up her internship at JFCS and her senior year in Social Work at Pitt this spring, Shawna is glad to know that she’s made a difference. “It’s been really amazing seeing the growth in the kids and knowing that I had a lasting impact,” she said. She also expressed gratitude to her community in Pittsburgh, where she participates in Bnai Brith Youth Organization at Pitt and attended several Chabad and Hillel shabbat dinners for students. In her home city of Boston, her family are members of Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead.
Shawna hopes that she can continue to find opportunities to make a difference in kids’ lives. She will be attending graduate school at Pitt for her Master’s in Social Work and hopes to eventually have a career working in foster care and adoption or at a children’s hospital. She expressed, “I want to say thank you to everyone who made the book club possible. I just want to be able to leave places knowing I had a positive influence on at least one child.”