Y L D P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G E M e l i s s a M o r a - A d v e n t i s t H e a l t h S y s t e m
lawyers helping Children dream
in the 2017 fall session alone , lawyers have volunteered 144 hours reading to 122 children , and 854 books have already been donated to the children through the read to dream program .
The old joke goes : Question : “ What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean ?” Answer : “ A good start .” Too often , the legal profession gets a bad rap with outsiders who either have little knowledge or misinformation about have what lawyers actually do and the standards to which lawyers are held . As a young lawyer putting in long hours trying to please partners and clients , it quickly became difficult to manage this perception of the profession . Ironically , the reality is that lawyers are out in the world doing a tremendous amount of good — and not always buried by those long hours in the courtroom or in the office writing contracts . Lawyers are making our communities better .
For instance , at The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division ’ s annual Affiliate Outreach Conference held January 12-13 this year , there were 29 different affiliate Bar groups vying for grant money to support projects that would help other young lawyers and the communities at large served by these Bar groups . These projects range from supporting legal aid clinics for the less fortunate to benefitting youth in mock trials . This is just a tiny snapshot of the good lawyers are doing all around the State of Florida . Representatives from the HCBA YLD attended the Conference and presented a project benefiting children in the Hillsborough County community that has become very important to the HCBA : The John Germany Young Reading Initiative ’ s Read to Dream mentoring program . In response to the HCBA YLD ’ s request for a grant , The Florida Bar YLD awarded a grant of $ 1,660 for books and school supply donations for our program .
The Read to Dream program is the vision of the late John Germany , who was a Hillsborough County attorney , founding member of the Holland & Knight law firm , and a judge in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit . Germany was the antithesis of any lawyer joke and a dedicated member
Thanks to HCBA member Melanie Griffin and her mother ( not shown ), who collected donations of books for the Read to Dream program at Melanie ’ s recent baby shower .
of the Tampa Bay community . He helped hatch the plans for the University of South Florida and was instrumental in finding funds to build the downtown library , which bears his name . John Germany was always a reader and dreamer and credited his long and fine career to the gift of a book he received at a young age . Before his passing , he shared the early development of a plan to share books with children in the community and left the financial means to jump start this one last civic project , now known as the John Germany Young Reading Initiative . It is the HCBA ’ s honor to continue to participate in and help grow the program .
The Read to Dream program is volunteer-staffed and addresses the lowest reading levels in Hillsborough County public schools by providing engaging reading activities and books for children in at-risk or underserved communities . The focus of the program is to share and promote the excitement and enjoyment of reading through small group reading sessions with children , help children improve their reading ability , expose them to a wide variety of books , and provide them with their very own books to encourage them to take ownership of their reading .
Continued on page 7
6 M A R - A P R 2 0 1 8 | H C B A L A W Y E R