Elmont youth get donated books

A charity started by four Long Island teenagers just made reading a whole lot easier for some of the children at Elmont's Gateway Youth Outreach program. Reading Reflections, a charity that collects gently used and new books, made a donation of more than 2,000 children's books at Dutch Broadway School on Friday, April 30.

On Friday afternoon, several volunteers stacked boxes of books on the school's front lawn, and many of the students in attendance couldn't wait to dig in and start reading.

Jeremy Schneck, 17, one of the group's presidents and a junior at North Shore Hebrew Academy High School, estimated that the charity has donated more than 50,000 books to Long Island and New York City students through dozens of events. He said the charity started five years ago to help a family friend maintain a school in Guyana. Through Reading Reflections, the school was able to fill it library with textbooks, classic novels and other educational resources. Once that happened, Schneck said, providing reading materials to students closer to home became the next logical step.

"A lot of groups on Long Island itself can't afford books and they need them," Schneck said. "We set up a website and people started sending us all their old and new books, because people don't want to throw them out, they decided to give it to a good cause and help us distribute them."

Schneck currently runs the charity with his cousin Daniel Mendelsohn, a Rockville Center resident. Schneck lives in Dix Hills. The group was started in 2005 by their two older brothers, Max Schneck and David Mendelsohn. When the original founders went off to college, Schneck said, he was more than happy to take over, not just because it's a great cause, but also because it's incredibly rewarding.

"When you actually see the smile on a kid's face who, if it weren't for what we were doing wouldn't otherwise have a book as easily, to give them a book and see them smile is just a great feeling," Schneck said.

For Patrick Boyle, chairman of Gateway Youth Outreach, having an organization provide quality reading material to students in his program is a huge help, and he said it clearly makes a big difference in students' lives.

"This is the second time that this has happened, the fist time it happened it was very successful, the kids got a big kick of getting the books, it was a lot of fun," Boyle said. "The quality of the books is unbelievable. There was a Harry Potter book, and one kid dove at that Harry Potter book. Harry Potter books cost about 20 bucks each and a lot of these parents don't have the opportunity to spend 20 dollars on a book."

Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray noted that she could tell the books were coming to the right place by how quickly the students got into the more than a dozen boxes stacked on the lawn in front of Dutch Broadway School. As the Schneck stood to take a picture with local officials, several of the children couldn't wait to get their hands on their new books and started digging around, looking for their favorite titles and characters.

"We know that these books are going to be loved and read and cherished, and that's the bottom line, so these young men deserve all the credit, they did a great job and these kids are just great recipients for those books," said Murray.

Anyone wishing to donate can visit the group's website at readingreflections.com.