Happy Halloween!

Students and staff at The Birchtree Center created scarecrows this month as part of the city-wide Scarecrows of the Port celebration. We also offered our students a practice "trick-or-treat" session to help prepare them for Halloween night. For Halloween tips from The Birchtree Center's staff, click here.

Read-A-Thon Report

From 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 10, until 6:00 p.m. the following day, intrepid volunteers conducted a twenty-four-hour Read-A-Thon at SecondRun Bookstore to benefit The Birchtree Center. Seventeen individuals of all ages read, answered literary trivia questions, played Scrabble, and heard local author Tim Horvath read from his work, all while raising pledges in support of The Birchtree Center's educational programs.

Great Expectations: A Reading Marathon (GERM), was established by RiverRun Bookstore and SecondRun Bookstore to bring attention to reading and independent bookstores and to support local nonprofits. GERM has gained national attention, and in October 2008, nine independent bookstores around the country hosted their own events.

The Read-A-Thon participants read more than 4,500 pages combined, from books that ranged from Harry Potter to Sense and Sensibility to sociology texts. In the process, they raised more than $700.00 for The Birchtree Center!

Thank you to the local businesses who donated to this event:

RiverRun Bookstore
SecondRun Bookstore
Breaking New Grounds
Café Espresso
G. Willikers
The Flatbread Company
The Fresh Local truck
The Music Hall
Prelude
The Stockpot Restaurant

You can learn more about the event here and in articles published in Foster's Daily Democrat, the Portsmouth Herald, Bookselling This Week, and Shelf-Awareness.

A New Website!

The Birchtree Center launched a new, improved website this fall. At www.birchtreecenter.org, you can learn more about our programs for children and youth with autism, read about upcoming events, and find out how you can help. You will also find tips for families living with autism, and you can suggest questions for our staff to answer online.

Thank you to the many individuals and organizations who helped make our new website possible! Integrated Development Corporation of Greenland, NH, designed the site and taught us to keep the site up-to-date using the Joomla! content management system. BJ's Charitable Foundation and The Fuller Foundation, Inc., provided generous grants supporting the development of online resources for our families, staff, and students. Dedicated volunteers, staff members, and board members provided essential feedback during the development of the site.

What do you think of the new website? You can offer your comments here or send email to our webmaster.

Fundraising Yard Sale a Success!

On September 20, volunteers from The Birchtree Center, Seacoast United, and Liberty Mutual offered a fundraising yard sale at the Seacoast United Indoor Arena in Hampton, NH. The weather smiled on us, and it was a great success, raising important funds to support programs at Birchtree and Seacoast United.


Many thanks to the dedicated volunteers and generous donors who helped make this event possible, including the following businesses:

Liberty Mutual
Birse's Property Maintenance
BJ's Wholesale Club
Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse
C&J Trailways
Dunkin' Donuts
Exeter Rent-All
Home Depot
Macy's Stores, Inc.
Market Basket
New England Revolution Charitable Foundation
Olive Garden
Outback Steakhouse
Panera Bread
Pepperidge Farm, Inc.
The Portsmouth Brewery
Shaw's Supermarkets
Shear Power Salon
Starbucks
Texas Roadhouse
TGI Friday's