Junior Woman’s Study Club Gives Largest
Donation Ever to Union College’s “Timeless Tales”

Barbourville's Junior Woman's Study Club presents a donation to representatives of Union's library and Timeless Tales.

On Tuesday, November 21, representatives from Barbourville’s Junior Woman’s Study Club presented Union College’s Timeless Tales program with a check for $2,000. The donation was made as part of the club’s literacy initiative and will be used to purchase books, teaching aids and other items.

The donation is the largest ever given to the Timeless Tales program, which was launched in 1999 by a Bonner Scholar at Union College. The student, an education major, noticed a need for an after-school tutoring program in reading. With the support of Common Partners, Union’s community service program, she created a program that matched trained student volunteers with children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Timeless Tales was originally housed in a College Court apartment but later relocated into a dedicated space in Union’s Weeks-Townsend Memorial Library.

During the presentation, Renee Hobbs, a Bonner Scholar who currently coordinates the program, thanked the Junior Woman’s Study Club for its generosity. “This shows a great deal of support for fighting illiteracy,” she told those gathered. Miss Hobbs emphasized that children who lag behind their peers in reading and math skills are more likely to drop out of school. The Timeless Tales tutoring program is intended to help children catch-up on those skills so as to foster success and decrease the risk of dropping out later in their educational careers.

The Timeless Tales tutoring program operates from September through November and January through April. Children who need assistance with reading receive one-on-one tutoring Monday through Thursday from 3:30 until 5:30. In recent years, requests for assistance with math have led to tutoring in that subject as well. When Timeless Tales is not in session, the space is used as the Curriculum Room, housing the library’s children’s literature area and resources for those studying to be teachers.

For more information about Timeless Tales, contact Union College’s Common Partners program at 546-1601, or visit the program’s website at www.unionky.edu.

December 5th, 2006

[Top]