Evan Owens’ Eagle Scout Project for St. Ethelreda

We were so happy to meet Evan Owens when he reached out about supporting SitStayRead with his Eagle Scout project this past Fall. After talking with him about ways he could help contribute to our mission, he prepared a fundraiser to purchase classroom materials and books for one of our school partners, St. Ethelreda in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago.

SitStayRead was thrilled to have helped facilitate this connection and we are ever grateful for Evan’s initiative and the support that his fundraiser received. Our special thanks also to Semicolon for supporting the book drive portion of this fundraiser!

Words From Evan

“Hello My name is Evan Owens, I am a senior at DePaul College Prep. I have just finished my Eagle Scout project where I worked with SitStayRead to benefit an elementary school on the south side called St. Ethelreda. With the help of the amazing team at SitStayRead I raised over $2000 through my GoFundMe. I also collected book donations through a local Chicago bookstore called, Semicolon Bookstore, to be donated to St. Ethelreda for their personal library. 

With the money I raised I purchased classroom materials like pens, pencils, hand sanitizer, paper towels, notebooks, and Lysol wipes. I took these materials and distributed them evenly into nine large tote bins, one for each classroom at St. Ethelreda. I brought the bins to St. Ethelreda and met the staff and some of the students. The principal, Dr. Spells, was extremely kind and very grateful for all of the donations. SitStayRead was a very helpful nonprofit to work with and I couldn’t have done it without their help. 

I chose to support SitStayRead with my Eagle Scout project because their goal is to promote literacy throughout the city and they do a great job of doing that with their amazing volunteers and specially trained dogs. I hope that my project can provide the students of St. Ethelreda with a comfortable learning space where they feel like they have all the materials they need in order to learn and keep on reading.”