To launch our new ‘People With Big Hearts’ feature, we met with 8 year old Lettie McGovern who decided to help children of all ages across Edinburgh be able to enjoy reading just as much as she does.
Eight year old Lettie McGovern loves football! She currently plays for Currie girls team and enjoys attending Hearts’ Community Coaching at Oriam every Friday.
A keen reader and a massive fan of Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford, Lettie was inspired by his book club initiative which was launched earlier this year to help disadvantaged children across Scotland and England. Lettie’s Mum, Lauren, explains “It hadn’t dawned on her that many children didn’t have books of their own at home. She wanted to do something to help and asked me if she could collect pre-loved books for local children who needed them”.
Lauren contacted Big Hearts, the charity of Heart of Midlothian, a few months ago to share Lettie’s idea and to see what the charity could do with about 100 second hand books.
Lettie’s school was a great help and very kindly emailed all parents and posted on social media to share details of the collection. Lettie and her friends from P4, Chloe Hollick and Charlotte Hill (pictured), made posters to put up and family and friends got onboard to help too.
The donated books arrived thick and fast and once they had all been collected, Lettie and Lauren set to work counting them. They placed the books in piles in their living room and counted each pile and put a note on top to show how many each contained. Lettie was extremely excited when she added them all up and realised she had managed to collect over 1600 books – “A staggering amount, it was way more than we could have ever expected” said Lauren.
The books are being distributed over the summer by Big Hearts, fulfilling Lettie’s wishes to give these books to families on low income, to refugee children and young people in Kinship Care who will all benefit greatly from receiving them.
Lettie comments “The best thing about doing this collection was seeing the number of books that were received and the range for different age groups which means that children of all ages can enjoy reading, like me!”
Lettie has another fantastic idea that she can’t wait to share with us soon and to anyone else thinking of doing something similar she says – “definitely do it!”
Thank you to everyone who donated a book and a massive well done to Lettie for thinking of others and doing something to help. A true charity champion with a big heart!
– July 2021
