Students, volunteers build take home bookshelves

LAWTON, Okla. (KSWO) - Elementary and Middle school students got the chance the build their own bookshelf on Saturday morning, allowing them to create an at home library.

The nonprofit organization, the next step wants to make sure that students have access to books.

With help from volunteers, students acted as engineers and built bookcases to take home.

The next step executive director, Onreka Johnson noticed that literacy levels across the nation have dropped significantly and wanted to remind students the importance of reading.

“ It’s really important that we continue to combine stem and life skills, there are lots of awesome stem programs out there, but we want our kids to be able not only to obtain jobs in this field but to maintain them and that’s where their life skills come in,” Johnson said.

The second part of this project will include the students getting the opportunity to fill the bookshelves that they built with different books of their choice.

They will receive incentives based off of how many books they read and how their scores increase.

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