Patrick’s Purpose Foundation donates over 500 books to Newport-Mesa Unified
Ahead of the school year, Newport-Mesa’s 22 elementary schools will be receiving more than a dozen books each to add to their libraries thanks to a donation from the Patrick’s Purpose Foundation.
The foundation announced Tuesday that it donated over 500 books to the district earlier this month, all of which focus on social-emotional health of children. All the books were purchased from Lido Village Books, which founder Kim Turner said was an intentional choice to support local businesses.
“As you know, the focus of our foundation is mental wellness especially in teens and children,” said Turner, who founded the nonprofit after her son, Patrick Turner, died by suicide in 2018. “We just figured that with everyone coming back from the pandemic, little kids are stressed. High schoolers are stressed.”
Turner said the initial idea was to potentially draft a book about Patrick, but that further research revealed there were a number of books that dealt with mental health for children in grades kindergarten through sixth grade. She then reached out to Lido Village Books, who along with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District staff, helped to cultivate a list of books to donate.
Those books include titles like “Don’t Feed the Worry Bug” by Andi Green and “Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too)” by Keith Negley.
The books were distributed to all the district’s elementary schools and included books in both Spanish and English. Turner said that the foundation spent $9,154 on them.
“It would be really awesome to get the books into the hands of the lower grades, so that if someone’s feeling angry or feeling frustrated or bullied, it would spark a conversation to talk about those feelings and show that it’s OK to talk about those feelings and that it’s OK to not feel OK,” Turner said in an interview Wednesday.
“If we can get the younger kids to learn how to deal with their feelings and their emotions, it will give them tools as they grow older and face tougher and probably more stressful situations. We hope that they will be better equipped to deal with things as they grow up,” she added. “Especially in our high achieving community, we expect a lot of kids.
“I just think that everybody at some point in their life is going to have a tough day, down day no matter how old you are,” said Turner. “If we can give these kids permission to talk about their feelings and sort of normalize it that everybody has a bad day or everybody gets angry, it’s very normal.
“It’s breaking down the stigma of talking about feelings, mental health, to just normalize it at a very young age so that they are feeling something, they wouldn’t be shy about talking to their teacher or parent or coach that ‘I’m not doing so great right now.’”
Annette Franco, a spokeswoman for the district, said the donation was “phenomenal” and that the Patrick’s Purpose Foundation was very good to the district in many ways.
“This is just a testament to how much our community cares,” Franco said. “We’ll continue the relationship with Patrick’s Purpose to see in other areas where we can work together and continue to develop our future leaders.”
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