The Kansas National Education Association-Student Program at Emporia State partnered with the ESU Honors College and local Uniserve organization to help create reading literacy kits as part of the Read to Your Bunny program during their meeting last Thursday.

“It gives some of these students a chance to get a book and a bunny when they might not have otherwise had the chance,” said Paul Reichenberger, president of ESU’s KNEA-SP and sophomore business education major.

The reading literacy kits contain a small book, a homemade stuffed bunny, a magnet and various informational pamphlets related to childhood literacy.

Kits are distributed to new parents in local hospitals in order to encourage parents to read to their babies 20 minutes every night, according to Janice Romeiser, member of the Emporia KNEA and leader of the local Read to Your Bunny project.

“This is a really great thing to get people involved in literacy,” Romeiser said.

During the meeting, student volunteers from KNEA-SP and the Honors College worked to stuff the homemade bunnies so that they could be placed into kits and dispersed to new parents.

By the end of the hour-long meeting, 43 bunnies were stuffed and ready to be placed into kits.

“These women (Read to Your Bunny volunteers) put others before themselves and spend the extra time to help children that they’ve never even met before,” said Holly Ann Davis, senior elementary education major. “I think that’s just a really awesome thing to be a part of.”