The Morongo Basin’s annual Spell-a-Thon is happening on Saturday. Put on by the Morongo Basin Friends of the Library, the event sees 12 teams of kids and adults competing for spelling supremacy, all in the name of raising funds for public libraries in Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms.
I spoke with Morongo Basin Friends of the Library Spell-a-Thon Committee Chair Debbie Medina, who told me about Saturday’s (March 22) event.
Debbie Medina: “The Spell-A-Thon is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year. It’s put on by the three Morongo Basin public libraries to benefit programs that are provided by the library. That includes summer reading programs, literacy, computers, all that kinds of things. We have teams of three. Each person has a turn spelling the word, but the teammates are able to converse and collaborate on the spelling before they spell out. They have so many seconds to spell it, and we go on from there.
“We have twelve teams this year. It goes table by table. We start out with pretty mild words and the words get harder and harder!
“It’s really neat because this year, we have two high school teams from each of the high schools. We had an 11 year-old girl, Josephine, walk into the library and say she wanted to get involved. We were able to put her on a team with other adults. The rest are adults. This is the first year we have someone so young on a team, and we’re hoping to expand that in the coming years.
We have lots of different raffle items at the event. We have 30 different raffle items, including a $400 water color painting donated by Esther Shaw.
We also have been selling tickets at the farmers markets, and we will have tickets available at the door. Just show up at the Luckie Park Activity Center at 9:00 a.m. this Saturday, March 22. I’m encouraging people to come out and cheer on our teams. It’s an event that nobody’s going to want to miss.”
To get more info on the Spell-a-thon you can visit this link: https://www.29fol.org/friends/spell-a-thon.aspx
