Aberdeen Receives First Little Free Library; Swan Meadows Gets Brush With Kindness from Habitat Susquehanna

From Habitat for Humanity Susquehanna

As part of Habitat for Humanity Susquehanna’s annual A Brush With Kindness (ABWK), volunteers spent the day doing yard work for the homeowners of Aberdeen’s Swan Meadows neighborhood . Volunteers cleaned gutters, trimmed bushes, weeded and mulched gardens for neighborhood revitalization efforts there.

In addition to ABWK, one of the longtime “core” volunteers, John Moore, built a Little Free Library for the neighborhood’s use. He installed it, along with the help of fellow Board member Daniel Duncan, at the nearby Victory Park. It is the first one of its kind in Aberdeen. (Havre de Grace has seven Little Free Libraries, Bel Air has three, and Edgewood and Abingdon each have one.) A Little Free Library is a small or medium-sized box that hold books, and its motto is “Take a Book, Return a book.”

It took Moore, a retired Lockheed Martin engineer and current Habitat Susquehanna Board member, several weeks to complete. The books placed in the Little Free Library were donated by the Aberdeen ReStore, Habitat Susquehanna’s home improvement store and donation center. A Habitat homeowner who lives in the neighborhood – Katie York – has agreed to regularly monitor the box to ensure the book supply remains plentiful. The Aberdeen ReStore will continue to resupply the box when the books’ levels are low. (To receive updates about the Swan Meadows Little Free Library, visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SwanMeadowsReads.)

Habitat Susquehanna’s next planned ABWK will occur in the spring of 2018 at Edgewood’s First Harford Square neighborhood. To volunteer for future ABWK activities, contact Brianne Young, Volunteer & Community Engagement Coordinator, at 410-638-4434 ext. 4.