 As we celebrate and investment in our I would say the most important thing that we all have our children our future the next generation of leaders in Columbia, South Carolina been fortunate over the years to visit hundreds of classrooms all across the midlands indeed all across the state and get hokey I'm at home with the kids and I love to tell them that that leaders are readers and we all know that regardless of the confines of the world in which these beautiful young children are growing up in that the more they learn to read then eventually they will they will read to learn and the tough asphalt or difficult situations that they might be living in the defined the physical world begins to change very rapidly as the ideas and that imagination that the power to to innovate and ideate becomes very real so investing in our children investing in the importance of reading couldn't be more important when a thank the Lipscomb Family Foundation and an affect for this incredible investment in our parks and rec foundation investment in our parks and rec institution has meant so much to hundreds of thousands of young people who've come through this great city over many years. This is an investment that will bear fruit for for for decades to come and on behalf of a humble city I want to say thank you. I think I'm going to give the microphone to City Councilman Sam Davis. I need to be repetitive of the mayor's mark remarks but I I believe I mentioned once before that this partnership is is very special. It is critical as indicated through his remarks also. I think it's fitting that I also mentioned that Fred Monk was a member of the board back a few years ago when we were building and trying to put the resources together for the Greenview gym and the foundation at that time. It is a significant contribution and I don't know if any of you have visited the gym. It's it's I think a tribute to the kinds of partnership such as the ones that we're paying tribute today is all about so we appreciate it and as usual we're going to continue to do our part to massage this relationship and at the same time be supportive of what we can do to to increase its ability to make the impact that it's already starting to make within the parks and rec and recreational corners of the city. So my gratitude so are the citizens of this part of the city but at the same time everybody benefits from this contribution. It's just that we're always or you seem to be always located at this spot. It's the latest of the kinds of efforts and relationships that we continue to build. And so thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much Councilman Davis and of course thank you to our Mayor Steve Benjamin. My name is Henry Simons and I'm the assistant city manager for operations of course for the city of Columbia. Of course we would like to officially welcome you to this announcement today. We're sincerely grateful for the opportunity that we have on this day. I want to recognize Councilman Duvall that's with us on today as well. And we want to continue to thank them our entire council for their continued support of our Parks and Rec Foundation. Of course we we have our chair to the Parks and Rec Foundation with us today. Mr. Fred Monk thank you so much Fred for your presence on today and your continued commitment to the Parks and Rec Foundation. I would also like to acknowledge of course our city manager Teresa Wilson for all of her continued support leadership and guidance. I am also grateful for the incredible leadership of our Parks and Recreation Department. Specifically Mr. Randy Davis who is our director of Parks and Recreation. Kenya Bryant our deputy director along with our entire team folks like Kerry Rich. They commit their their lives to enhancing the youth in our community which which means a lot. I also want to thank our my office manager Ebony Kelly who keeps the train moving. So thank you. Thank you so much Ebony. This will not be possible without their dedication and commitment to the city of Columbia. So we are excited to formally announce today the grand awards from the Liskum Foundation who has gracefully awarded us with $7000. That we were awarded to the Parks and Rec Foundation of course and Abflag who has awarded us with an additional $9000. All funding received will sponsor what we have named Little Readers Future Leaders Literacy Program. The program is designed to improve literacy while making reading fun for our young people. Ages 4 through 11 grades K through 5 who live in the communities near Pinehurst and Lord Park which is within the 29203 zip code which is also along the North Columbia corridor. This program will inspire and boost reading levels by providing culturally diverse age appropriate children's books to youth on a monthly basis. So we're absolutely excited about this opportunity and with these resources available to our youth we feel very strongly that placing these books, this opportunity, this access will put them on a path of success at an early age. So we're certainly excited about that. We want to bring forth our chair of the Parks and Rec Foundation Fred Monk to make some comments and then we'll come back and do some acknowledgments. Henry, thank you very much. As Henry indicated my name is Fred Monk and I'm privileged to be the chair of the Columbia Parks and Recreation Foundation and our 15 member board from across the city of Columbia. A number of which were appointed by Howard Duvall, Council Member Howard Duvall and Council Member Sam Davis as well as Mayor Benjamin's appointee. So it is our privilege to really act as a liaison with the Columbia Parks and Recreation Department and the city of Columbia. One of the reasons I'm serving on the board is exactly for this reason is to see how we can gain community support for the programs of the city and parks. I tell people, you know, the parks are a tremendous asset for the city of Columbia and really help enhance our quality of life. But they're also, I think, a very important connective tissue for our community. The parks touch all of us. They are in every geographic region of our city and they reach out to all of our citizens, young and old and in between. In this case, with grants for little readers, I really think, you know, I think I read that one of the grants is going to touch 60 young people, another grant is going to touch another 60 perhaps. And we don't know what really transformation these grants will have on these young people. There are stars out there and they are in all of us and hopefully these grants will help really, you know, light a spark under these young people. Help them to build the confidence that they need to succeed and to go forward and do good works and contribute to our city. So again, the Parks Foundation is really the intermediary. We are trying to help make things happen for the parks and really build the tremendous spirit that already exists there. So thank you very much. Thank you so much, Fred, for your comments. I want to take a moment to acknowledge our partners. Of course we partnered with Riston School District 1, so we want to thank Dr. Tracia Cooper for a collaboration on this effort. We also partnered with the Riston County Library and we have Ms. Laura Cook, who's the community outreach manager for the library here with us today. So thank you so much for your presence on today. This has been an amazing journey for us so far and I am encouraged by the Liskum Foundation as well as AFLAC who made a decision to commit to our youth to impact them in a profound way. These are things that I believe that they will never forget and we want to continue down this path to educate our young people. So thank you so much for your presence on today. We appreciate it.