Off the Shelf: Read to Feed
By Angela Spatafore on November 05, 2025 from Off the Shelf
We are challenging the community to read 1 million minutes by the end of 2025. Need more convincing to read and track your minutes? For every 2,000 minutes read and logged, Heifer International will donate a flock of chicks to a family in need. Heifer International has been around since 1944 with the goal to end world hunger, and their work spans across 19 countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, the United States of America and Zambia. You can learn more about Heifer International on their website, https://www.heifer.org/.
To participate, all you need is to create an account through bplwv.beanstack.org, join the Read to Feed challenge, and begin logging your minutes. If you have participated in any of our summer reading programs over the past few years, you may already have a Beanstack account.
Our million-minute goal carried over from this year’s summer reading challenge, so many of the minutes were logged before Read to Feed went live in September, but so far, we have already donated more than 30 flocks of chicks. The challenge runs through the end of December, so there is still plenty of time to join!
Families and classrooms can choose to sign up individually or as a group, which makes logging minutes for multiple people easy. Beanstack also makes reading fun and interactive by allowing users to become friends and compete on leadership boards only your friends and family can see. Additionally, individuals who read 2,000 minutes and complete the Read to Feed challenge will receive recognition in the library.
Our staff is available to help you use Beanstack or look up your account. If you need 1-on-1 help, we offer that too! You can schedule an appointment on our website (https://www.bplwv.org/tech-help-17020) or give us a call at 304-842-8248. So be sure to sign up for Read to Feed because the more you read, the more you feed!
Editor's Note: Pictured are Rebecca OConnor and Shelby Meador posed in front of Read to Feed bulletin board.
