The Acorn project is an initiative for the Well-Read that looks at promoting reading in the community. Naas Community College teamed up with Craddockstown Nursing home in the year 2019-2020 to build on student and resident enjoyment of reading.

There are benefits to both the students and the elderly residents of the nursing home in the weekly visits students paid to the nursing home. These visits allow the students to bond with the residents over reading, card games and story trading. The goal of the Acorn Project was not only to encourage the enjoyment of reading for the residents and the students but it also had a long term goal. The TY students that engaged in the Acorn project were going to turn the stories they heard from the Residents into short stories commemorating their memories of Naas. This short story collection was to be published on the school website for the whole community of Naas to read.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic hitting the world by storm, our Acorn project hit a stumbling block in its journey to becoming fully fledged. This year, in order to protect the vulnerable in our community, but still engage with them to help offset the loneliness of cocooning and isolation, we worked to adapt the Acorn project.

Instead of visiting with the residents, our Ty students began a penpal project with the residents, encouraging both students and residents to trade and read stories from their own lives. This allowed us to safetly interact with the Residents quarintining letters during transfer so that the students and residents were and remain safe. Again, our goal is to turn a collection of short stories from these letters into a short story book that can be shared with the community of Naas.