Ronald McDonald House Holding 'Read For The House' Fundraiser
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Have you read a good book lately? If not, we have a few recommendations for you, but it gets even better, you can read and help a great organization at the same time.
The Ronald McDonald House of Philadelphia is holding its "Read for the House" fundraiser, and you can join in.
"We have families that are staying with us 30, 60, 90 days, even six months, we have families that are coming up to a year that they have been staying with us," Susan Campbell said.
Campbell is CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Philadelphia region. Eyewitness News chatted with her about the Read for the House fundraiser and how it's being done a bit differently this year.
Kids and adults can take part.
"We've created a virtual platform of 28 days of reading and each day you can log on and there are different reading activities that you can do," Campbell said. "And then, we added a new component because all of us are hopefully reading more that we have a book club website that we've created and we have over 125 adults that have joined for the month of February. And we have 10 authors who have volunteered their time starting this weekend and they're doing book club workshops and they're talking about their book and it's all done via Zoom and we ask folks to make a $25 donation and they can join any book club seminar they want to."
Among those authors is Robb Armstrong. He lives in California now, but he's originally from West Philadelphia. Armstrong's book is called "Fearless: A Cartoonist's Guide to Life."
"Part of the job that book is doing is paint adversity in a whole new way and to not treat it as some bad thing you should avoid but something you should seize upon this challenge, understand why it's happening to you specifically," Armstrong said.
"I'm not surprised that you're involved with the Ronald McDonald House of Philadelphia and their program what pride does that fill your heart with right now, just to be involved in the program at RMH?" I asked.
"Man, It's just unbelievable, first of all, we already support that charity it's just an amazing place and for it to be my West Philly RMH, my home town and all that. I think the best RMH are Philadelphia ones, I mean and there's one in West Philly," Armstrong said. "There's one near where I live in Pasadena actually out here that we drop off donations to and stuff. I just feel so honored man."
Another local author donating her time is Leigh Himes. She calls her book "The One That Got Away" a love letter to Philadelphia.
"My book is set all over the area in Delco where I live, but there's a lot of Center City, South Philly, the Main Line, so it's the grit and the glamour of Philadelphia that I love," Himes said.
She's just happy to be able to give back to this remarkable organization.
"They do so much for families all over the world and here we have the RMH right here in our back yard. We hope that we'll never have to use it, but one day we might so they're doing tremendous work and I hope everybody will support them," Himes said. "This is an easy way to support them, all you have to do is cozy up in your pajamas and read."
Cozy up and read, sounds nice, doesn't it?
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