Spread the Word Nevada along with the Public Education Foundation, the CCSD Engagement Unit, and others are behind the book bus.

Lisa Habighorst, my wonderful friend, Cofounder and CEO of Spread the Word Nevada joins us in studio right now.

Thanks for joining us, Lisa.

(Lisa Habighorst) Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

-An organization near and dear to my heart for so many reasons.

Let's talk about how long you've been here in Southern Nevada and how many schools you're in now.

And it's not just here in Las Vegas and Henderson and North Las Vegas.

-Yeah.

Well, as our name says, Spread the Word Nevada.

So our goal has always been to get to the whole state.

But we started 22 years ago with one school, and we are now in 78 across the state.

So it's exciting.

-And for those not familiar with your organization, what do you do?

I'm seeing a lot of wonderful books here, Sonia Sotomayor, I even see Elmo's Puppy Play Date.

-Yeah.

We're all about books for kids.

Basically, we are targeting at-risk youth and families trying to build home libraries in their homes.

But we've also grown into mentoring and tutoring, struggling readers, family literacy programs where the families come in and we teach the families the importance of reading together.

And then we also our newest program is baby's, birth to five.

So we're working with these young families who really have just come out of the gate, have a newborn, don't have any idea how to get them educated and get them into literacy.

And so that program has been extremely successful.

-And let's talk about-- we just saw the book bus.

-Mm-hmm.

-Let's talk about your involvement with that and the importance of helping families create those libraries at home.

There's nothing like opening up a book.

Sure, you can now do it on your phone, but to actually hold a book, that's something really special.

-Yeah.

The book bus is wonderful and such a great collaboration with Public Education Foundation and Clark County School District.

We love working with them.

It was really their idea, but they came to us because they know we're the book people.

So it's been a nice collaboration.

We've been able to reach more schools that we wouldn't really serve, because we're going to all income level schools with that bus or community activities which we don't really do.

We really focus on the at-risk population.

-And Nevada Reading Week comes around every year.

You are there in those schools.

Exciting things happened this Nevada Reading Week.

-It has been an amazing year this year.

We partnered with the Dollar Loan Center resident team.

So it's the Henderson Silver Knights and the Ignite, the G League, NBA G League.

And those sponsors are going out to schools.

We challenge our kids that we serve to do reading per minute.

And so the big winner was Fay Herron, and they read over almost 98,000 minutes.

So they're gonna get-- they're going to have this great assembly.

And then we also have the-- we had schools that we don't support but, "We need books."

So we asked the schools to do book drives.

And so Divich Elementary did a amazing book drive, brought in over 9,000 books for us.

So they're gonna get a special assembly, too, with the representatives from those clubs.

It's just been great.

It's such a community effort.

-What else do you have going on?

You have a gala coming up.

-The gala coming up March 23.

And so that's very exciting at Aria.

Our theme is 101 Dalmatians.

We always pick a children's theme, so it will be a lot of fun.

I hear Cruella is showing up with her henchmen.

-And Lisa, another thing I love about Spread the Word Nevada is the fact that there are always opportunities to volunteer.

We have a lot of our wonderful viewers who might want to volunteer.

-Oh, and we could use them very much.

We give out over 70,000 books a month now.

And most of those are gently used.

I would say 80% of those are gently used.

So we are buying gently used books, but also getting them donated.

They have to be wiped off and checked to make sure they're appropriate and in the best shape possible.

We want them to look like these are gently used books that look brand new, because we want our kids to get the best.

And so we need those kinds of volunteers.

If you'd like to read with a struggling reader, we need mentors.

There's just all kinds of ways you can volunteer and get tuned in with us.

-And where do we go for more information?

-The website, spreadthewordnevada.

It has a volunteer banner up top, and just click on that and it shows you all the different things you can do.

-Lisa, thanks so much for all that you do to help so many wonderful kids here in Southern Nevada.

-It's our pleasure.

We just love it.

Nevada is a wonderful state, and we are proud to do it.

-Yes, we are.

Thank you so much, Lisa.

Well, many community members visited schools during Nevada Reading Week.

We just told you about that, and I had the honor of doing it as well.

I stopped by Jack Dailey Elementary School with members of the Kiwanis Club of the Las Vegas Strip.

It's a school that the club adopted many years ago.

We had a lovely time reading to these wonderful students.