Two groups in the Morden area will each benefit from a $300 grant provided by Pembina Escarpment Reading Council.

A teacher at Minnewasta School who applied for the grant can now continue his Young Author's and Illustrator's Night. At this event, students are able to video chat with authors whose books they studied in class.

"It was a very powerful opportunity Skyping with a real author. The author was from California so the kids thought it was very cool to be Skyping with the author, that they had read his books and learned about, and for him to be so far away but they could still talk to him," said Darlene Keith, the treasurer for the council.

The other grant will help a Morden-based program where high school students will read French material which will be recorded and turned into a barcode. Younger students and their parents can then take the books home and listen to the recordings when they scan the barcode, making it easier to learn the language.

Pembina Escarpment Reading Council provides grants to groups for local literacy projects "with the hope that it would instill a love of literacy, not just of reading but just communicating with people, and love of books and reading, and just learning in general," according to Keith.

Elm Creek School and Treherne also received grants.