Donor Feature Doctor Takes Passion for ROR to New Heights In March, the ROR National Center welcomed Dr. Beverly Edwards and her practice, Ahoskie Pediatrics in Ahoskie, North Carolina, to our program. Dr. Edwards' story of joining ROR is a familiar one, but her Site's funding stream is anything but, as she has generously pledged to personally fund the Site's Annual Book Commitment (ABC) out of her own salary! It turns out that Dr. Edwards was a supporter of ROR's mission long before she ever heard of the program. For years, Dr. Edwards has emphasized the importance of reading to her patients and their families. She discovered, however, that many of the families she serves cannot afford books. In response, Dr. Edwards purchased 40 children's board books, some in English some in Spanish, to distribute to her underprivileged patients. Only later did she learn of ROR, through a good friend who was already an ROR practitioner in Florida. Dr. Edwards decided to apply to become an ROR Site, offering to fully fund her site because of her deep belief in our mission. She said that the application process was a snap: "It was so easy. I'm still looking for the hard part." Dr. Edwards' patients, 70 percent of whom are African-American, have responded enthusiastically to the new Scholastic books she now distributes at every well-child visit. A board member of the Ahoskie Public Library, Dr. Edwards plans to involve the town library in her efforts to foster in children a love of reading. She directs her patients to the library's children's summer program, for example, and fellow library board members (along with an 80 year-old former schoolteacher) volunteer to read to patients in her waiting room. Dr. Edwards explains further that Ahoskie has outgrown its public library and with the ROR program encouraging local families to seek books, she foresees the town mobilizing to improve its library resources. Dr. Edwards, who counts ROR Medical Director Perri Klass among her favorite authors, credits her parents for instilling in her a self-sustaining love of reading. As someone who grew up on Agatha Christie mystery books and the Little House series, Dr. Edwards takes great pleasure in providing her patients with books. "It gives them the tools," she says, "to now go and make it."   Return