Books Help Brighten the Lives of West County Kids

Since December 2004, West County Reads! has worked with Contra Costa County’s Emergency Service Providers. ESP is a coalition of 30 agencies supporting homeless, low-income, foster & immigrant families. Some of the agencies involved are Opportunity, Girls Inc., Bay Area Rescue Mission, GRIP, Richmond Food Pantry, Rubicon Programs Inc., Salvation Army and Neighborhood House.

On September 15, 2005 WCR participated in the Back to School Block Party sponsored by the Bay Area Rescue Mission. At this event over 400 students from low-income families received a bag of new school supplies and WCR was able to provide a free book to each student.

On October 8, 2005 WCR participated in a separate, but similar event in Richmond sponsored by First Five Contra Costa and the West County Regional Group. At this Super Saturday Family Fest WCR gave out gently used books to over 500 children from the surrounding neighborhoods. We also awarded new books as raffle prizes to families who participated in a survey to gauge literacy needs in the community.

This past December WCR provided books to the Emergency Service Providers' Holiday Assistance Program, as we did last year. In recent years, ESP relied on the Marines’ Toys for Tots program to provide presents for these children. Last year the Toys for Tots program was greatly affected because so many Marines were deployed to Iraq and the program was not able to collect as many toys. Because of this need – WCR offered to supply books. In many instances, the books provided to the children were the only holiday present they received.

This year West County Reads! coordinated the distribution of 1,211 books to 19 Emergency Services agencies who in turn allocated the books to families in need for the holidays. This wonderfully successful effort (along with the earlier book giveaways) was spearheaded by Robin Wilson, Chair of WCR’s Book Drive Subcommittee. As with most of West County Reads! activities, the holiday book giveaway was a collaboration of many individuals, community groups and businesses. Special thanks to the following for helping to brighten the lives of so many families during the holidays:

• Barnes & Noble Booksellers - Hilltop Plaza
• Brook Barnum of Tricycle Press
• Half Price Books - Berkeley
• Kate Rauch with Supervisor John Gioia’s office
• Madera PTA
• Pat Player
• Richmond Kaiser Pediatrics' Reach Out & Read Program
• Summer Brenner
• Virgil Weekes of Richmond LEAP
  

If you wish to support our future book drives please contact Robin Wilson, Chair of WCR’s Book Drive Subcommittee at 510-223-0527 or robinyeewilson@aol.com.