Elevating Readers Together

We formed our 501 (c) 3 in the Spring of 2022. As our organization promotes literacy through providing books for kids 5-18 in Salida, we will donate books to the birthday book programs at schools, help with public library programs, provide books for classroom libraries for kids to check out, and ensure that all kids have their own books at their houses. We will provide a variety of books for students. 

Our organization’s board is composed of R32-J educators, local librarians, and parents working together to identify opportunities to engage K-12 Salidans with reading. We recognize, and many of us directly work on and create, existing literacy projects in Salida. We know firsthand the accomplishments that are achieved each year through existing programs. Together, we also see several program opportunities to expand home libraries and other venues for book access (such as classroom libraries) if we can fund them. This group is deeply committed to supporting the vitality and resiliency of the youth in our community.

Research shows that youth with home libraries, even small ones, reap long term cognitive benefits in problem solving and literacy abilities. Offering our community’s youth access to books can support our community vitality by fostering those abilities, and by helping close achievement gaps between children with home libraries and those without.

 We just finished funding our first project for a book vending machine for Longfellow Elementary School to help distribute books to kids in Salida after they age out of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. We are continuing our efforts to get vending machines in all the schools, so we can sustain our distribution of books for kids to receive and build their home libraries, so they can sustain their reading practice.