#WRECares Read-A-Thon by Mia Mandala Raises $21,000

Photography by on April 14th, 2020 in #WRECares, Editorials, Lifestyle

Mia Mandala

Miami, FL – April 14, 2020 – After experiencing her school, the city and the country shutting down, and watching the news about COVID-19 for the past month get worse and worse, Mia Mandala, an 11-year old resident of Miami Beach and a sixth-grade theatre student at Miami Arts Charter School in Wynwood, wanted to figure out a way to help. She asked her parents if she could organize a read-a-thon, and figure out a way to partner with an organization to help first responders.

This is how the #WRECares read-a-thon was born! The read-a-thon will run from Thursday, April 16th at 6pm for one week, and all proceeds will benefit #WRECares, One hundred percent of your contribution helps support #WRECares network of seamstresses and their materials used to make masks and help save lives. Please click here to donate.

How will it work?

Kids will ask their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and parents’ friends to “sponsor” them.

For each page read, the sponsor(s) will donate (X) cents per page.

The kids will have 1 week to read as much as they can (honor system so let’s keep ‘em honest!), and raise as much money as they can.

At the end of the week, the sponsors can go directly to the following website and donate directly to #WRECares.

So – parents – get your kids involved! Let’s read some books and save some lives!  We are encouraging as many kids to participate as possible, and as many parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and friends to sponsor as we can reach. If your kids would like to participate, or if you would like to sponsor Mia or another of our readers, please email Mia at miareadathon@gmail.com and we will set it up!

Read the full Q&A below about how Mia started the program.

Mia Mandala

WRE: How did you come up with the idea to start the Read-A-Thon?

Mia Mandala: When we started to be quarantined, I knew I wanted to read more, as I hadn’t been reading as much as I usually do because of school and rehearsals. On YouTube I came across videos of people doing 24-hour read-a-thons, challenging themselves to see how many pages (or books) they could read in one day. I then decided to challenge myself; first reading one book, then reading a bunch of books in one day, and thought it would be cool to do another one, with other kids, and do it as a fundraiser.

WRE: Why did you want to get involved with #WRECares? 

MM: When I told my dad about the read-a-thon fundraiser idea, he told me that Seth, who I have known almost all my life, was raising money to manufacture protective masks. I thought it would be great to partner with them on this.

WRE: How much money did the Read-A-Thon raise?

MM: The read-a-thon was for one week, ended on Thursday April 23rd, and we raised over $21,000! 22 kids from Miami, New York, and North Carolina participated. Collectively we read over 10,500 pages total!

WRE: What has been your favorite part about starting the Read-A-Thon?

MM: The Zoom meetings were a lot of fun. We got to connect with some of our friends all over the country who were participating, and everyone shared quarantine stories, talked about their favorite books, and how it was going.

WRE: Have you thought about keeping the concept of a Read-A-Thon going or starting a book club? 

MM: I think it would be great to do another one. We were so happy with how much money we raised in such a short time and with not a lot of planning. All the kids seemed to really enjoy knowing they were helping out.

I decided to challenge myself; first reading one book, then reading a bunch of books in one day, and thought it would be cool to do another one, with other kids, and do it as a fundraiser.

Mia Mandala