2018 Annual Report
A Letter from our founder, Amanda Collins
Access Books Bay Area was founded three years ago with the belief that school libraries matter, especially for children living in poverty. A high quality school library program has a lasting academic impact on students, and can even mitigate for the effects of poverty. Over the last three years, what began as a relatively simple mission to restock school libraries and beautify school library facilities in high poverty schools, has grown and developed in the face of the circumstances we have encountered at schools around the Bay Area, where lack of regular staffing has played as large a role in the neglect of school libraries as has the lack of funding for new books.
In 2018, Access Books Bay Area’s work in schools in the Ravenswood School District of East Palo Alto and the Alum Rock School District of East San Jose included hundreds of beautiful new books for the libraries, new reading furniture, and colorful and engaging murals, but it also included many more volunteer hours and the expertise of our trained librarian to help struggling schools to create a more effective library space and program through weeding of the existing collection, help recruiting parent volunteers to help maintain the library space, and help organizing the collection to make the library more accessible for students.
With your support, we look forward to serving even more schools in 2019, and expanding our reach to other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as to continuing to innovate to better meet the needs of school libraries!
Amanda Collins
Executive Director and Founder
WE BELIEVE –
- Access to high quality pleasure reading materials should not be limited to children of affluent families.
- Reading for pleasure regularly is the single most important predictor of future academic success.
- An improved school library collection, with new and interesting books, can make the difference for a child who had no other access to books at home or otherwise.
- School libraries that are welcoming, colorful, comfortable spaces can not only encourage reading, but can become hubs of learning and culture at their schools.
OUR APPROACH
Collection maintenance, coaching in parent volunteer recruitment and training, & new books for the library
Mural painting & new comfortable reading furniture to encourage library use
Partnering with local service organizations for book drives and volunteers to work alongside members of the school community
MATERIAL SUPPORT
New, high interest books in the library encourages greater use of the library by both classes and individuals, and increases access to pleasure reading materials for all students
PROGRAM SUPPORT
The support of our credentialed librarian allows understaffed school libraries to better manage their collection through weeding of old, out of date titles before the project, and helps to organize the collection for maximum impact after the project.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION
Volunteers from local service organizations work alongside volunteers from the school communities we serve, creating new connections in the interest of literacy. Many school community volunteers become ongoing library helpers, and many service organization volunteers go on to volunteer on future projects once they see the impact they can make for communities in need.
PROGRAM GROWTH
Number of Schools Served Each Year
Number of Books Donated Each Year
Financials
V I S I O N F O R
2 0 2 0
In 2020 Access Books Bay Area would like to continue expanding our work, reaching the following goals:
- Complete one school project every two months during the school year, for a total of 4 projects
- Increase our visibility in the Bay Area community through outreach and media coverage
- Increase our donor pool and overall number of sustaining donors by 200%
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