At Urban Science, our collective commitment to our #InventTheFuture value guides our approach to driving innovation into every corner of the automotive industry – and progress in the communities where our team members live and work. We take great pride in our ability to help those who need us most, and in the work our global team members do to make a difference in their communities.
This past month, our company’s Nashville office exemplified our #InventTheFuture value through partnering with Book’em for an organized book drive. Book’em’s mission is to create a more literate Nashville and ignite children’s passion for reading through book ownership. After book collections ended, our Nashville-based volunteers came together on Dec. 7 to help Book’em prepare the books for donations with tasks such as sorting, cleaning, stamping and shelving.
Mohera Narimetla, analyst, spearheaded the initiative, yielding remarkable results by collecting over 200 books that will go to underprivileged children in the Nashville area. In college, Mohera was heavily involved in advocacy and social-justice-based initiatives. She enjoys engaging in work that focuses on multiculturalism and diverse lived experiences that create progress for people and communities. During the pandemic, Mohera discovered a passion for reading and explored how she could integrate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into a book-based community service. It was then she found Book’em.
“Based on the demographics of children Book’em serves, most of the requested books are bilingual or have diverse representation, so many of the books we collected fell into one of those two categories,” said Mohera. “It was incredibly inspiring to see we were not only able to provide books to children in need but also to offer books that promote feelings of being seen and understood across their youth readers.”
Across our 20 offices worldwide, our team members make a difference in their communities through wide-ranging volunteering and philanthropic activities. Our people are given 12 hours of paid volunteer time to support causes in their local community annually. Click here to read more about our community efforts.
Many thanks to our Nashville-based colleagues who participated in the Book’em processing day mentioned above. We are incredibly grateful for your support and commitment to making a difference:
Mohera Narimetla, John Welchance, Ryan Truong, Sarah Bombrys, Dustin Derryberry, Denise Harness, Hayden VanDerVoort, Kiran Rangaraj and Kristin Lowe
Book’em’s mission is to create a more literate Nashville and ignite children’s passion for reading through book ownership and enthusiastic volunteers. Book’em began in 1989 when four women (Lee Fairbend, Karen Estevez-Gill, Georgeanne Chapman, and Ruth Ann Harnisch) united to find opportunities to assist the local chapter of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the largest non-profit children’s literacy organization in the United States, in meeting its needs for books and volunteers. Books were collected and distributed through the Christmas Clearing Bureau, and eventually, these distributions were expanded to schools and community organizations – Books for Nashville’s Kids was born. Book’em grew through the years, distributing tens of thousands of books annually and adding Ready for Reading, a volunteer-based reading program in early learning centers. Book’em merged with RIF in 2006, and now administers the RIF program in 15 Title I Metro Nashville elementary schools.
