ADENA — A $1,000 donation from JSW Steel is helping to establish a new program at Buckeye West which hopes to instill a deeper love of literature.

Melissa McCain, treasury manager for JSW, provided the contribution that school officials said will benefit a new reading club led by English literature arts and social studies teacher Kobe Hill. The program would include up to 60 third-to-fifth-grade students with plans to incorporate the entire school in the future.

McCain said the Mingo Junction-based steelmaker has long supported community causes with funding given each quarter, and previous recipients range from school and local youth sports teams to community Christmas and Easter ventures. JSW has contributed funding and time for the annual River Sweep cleanup project, been involved with Angel Tree projects to provide Christmas gifts to children, and also donated money to ensure local families had meals during the holidays.

“We try to give back to the community and we’ve donated to other schools for reading programs,” she said. “We just want to help kids out, either through a reading program or something else to help them.”

The latest contribution will help establish the reading club this spring, and Hill said students will meet several times a week and partner together for reading projects, then they will discuss their books and later conduct a book fair where they create displays and dress as characters based on their respective tomes.

“It’s really important to get the kids into books. We would like to set the book fair and have others come down and check out what they have done. Everyone should see how hard they worked,” Hill said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the imagination of the younger generations come alive.”

Hill added that students regularly work with technology, but he wanted to see their creativity and knowledge grow through books.

“I want them to be excited about it, and when they get finished they would have a show-and-tell and dress as characters. We’re trying to teach them that reading is cool.”

Principal Brian DiCola was thankful to JSW for helping children build a love of literature.

“We’re really excited and it opens children up to early literacy and helps make them better readers,” DiCola commented. “It’s humbling. It takes a village to come together to benefit our kids.”

Students Atticus Kovach, Allison Brown and Harper Hayman were also excited by the prospect.

“It feels really good and it is for children to learn,” said Kovach, a fifth-grade student at the school.

“I really feel good about it and I love reading,” added Brown, a fourth-grader at West.

“It’s cool,” added Hayman, a third-grader. “I like all books.”