Bookmobile News

We are thrilled to announce that Speedway Children’s Charities has welcomed the Free Bookmobile to its family of funded programs! The mission of Speedway Children’s Charities remains true to the ideals it was founded upon in 1982: To care for children in educational, financial, social and medical need in order to help them lead productive lives. Though the organization boasts chapters nationwide, the Sonoma group alone has distributed more than $4.5 million to over 185 Sonoma County youth groups since 2001!

Speedway funding will boost our efforts to reach 0-5 year-olds this year, and as digital devices become cheaper and compete for the attention of yet more youth, the timing of this award is excellent. We will use it to continue to inspire the youngest of our fellow citizens to read early and often, and to use those skills as a springboard to enhance learning, communication and collaboration over their lifetimes. Thank you, Speedway Children’s Charities, for helping us promote literacy and love of reading to the next generation!

With a strong line-up of partnerships forged behind the scenes, the Petaluma Community Foundation came out swinging this year in its announcement of a Collaboration for Youth At-Risk. PCF is know for mobilizing and channeling the contributions of its partners and donors to an interconnected network of programs and services, maximizing the collective impact of their donations. This time they brought the directors of eight organizations to the same table ahead of time to make sure that the productive connections were already set into motion. As a result of the process, and thanks to their generous funding, the Free Bookmobile will be serving Petaluma’s youth in collaboration with North Bay Children’s Center, Mentor Me Petaluma, the local Boys & Girls Clubs, and other hard-working groups!

Since 1975, PCF has been devoted to encouraging informed and meaningful philanthropic giving that will make a broad and dynamic impact on improving quality of life in the greater Petaluma area. A responsible steward of funds entrusted to the Foundation, PCF performs unparalleled due diligence and tracks impacts and outcomes achieved with its grant dollars.  In all of these ways, PCF fulfills its role as a community asset that is informed, accessible, supportive, transparent and accountable. More information is available at http://petalumacf.org/ and a brief introductory video featuring the Free Bookmobile is available below. Be sure to catch all Free Bookmobile videos by clicking here to visit our YouTube channel.

In our continuing quest to serve the most access-challenged residents of Sonoma County, we have added a 13th regular stop to our basic monthly route. The Santa Rosa Marketplace, the large outdoor shopping complex along Santa Rosa Avenue south of downtown, is very close to low-income housing for thousands of citizens, including subsidized apartments to the east and mobile home parks to the south. After a few months of trials, we have decided to make this a permanent monthly visit for us, and hope to spread the word to surrounding neighborhoods, especially the Taylor Mountain, Bellevue, and Elsie Allen school communities. We will be located inside the large parking lot along Kawana Springs Road, just south of Trader Joe’s and BevMo.

As with our other regular service locations, our schedule at the SR Marketplace will always be an evening or weekend, for maximum public access. You can find the date and time for each month on our website, always published by the 25th of the preceding month, and in print in the Sonoma County Gazette. Our other regular stops are in Geyserville, Roseland, Larkfield, Boyes Hot Springs, Cotati, Freestone, Valley Ford, Bodega Bay, Jenner, Monte Rio, Kenwood, and Glen Ellen.

For a third year, the Codding Foundation has not only renewed their generous annual support of the Free Bookmobile, but expanded it. Their investment will help us reach at least 15,000 access-challenged residents across Sonoma County with more than 30,000 high quality books of choice in the coming year. A majority of those receiving books will be children who visit the Free Bookmobile at their school, after-care program, child development center, foster agency, camp, or special event. As a wonderful bonus, a portion of Codding Foundation’s grant will allow us to pursue matching funds for our work with 0 – 5 year-olds.

Established in 1961 as part of Hugh Codding’s legacy, the Codding Foundation has consistently supported local agencies that help Sonoma County youth and families. In 2013, PDI Surgery Center, Boys & Girls Club, Committee on the Shelterless, Northern California Center for Well-Being, Santa Rosa Community Health Centers, and Social Advocates for Youth were among the many organizations that received grant funding from Codding Foundation. We are extremely grateful to be part of their extended family, which will allow us to continue to share literacy and the love of reading throughout our community!

Thanks to a referral by our friends at the San Francisco Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, the Ohio-based Junior Library Guild has made a generous donation of beautiful children’s books to the Free Bookmobile.  ”Collection Development for Every Library” is the JLG’s motto, and they offer a range of services to help libraries nationwide build their collections conscientiously.  Fortunately for us they had some returns on hand and were able to donate a huge stack of top-notch hardcover titles, including a number in Spanish and bilingual format.  We can’t wait to get these on board and start distributing to local families who will build both literacy and relationships by reading together!

The sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students at Lawrence E. Jones Middle School in Rohnert Park collected 600 children’s books and 109 adult books during a drive they held during the first two weeks of school.  Integrity, service, perseverance, and discovery are the cornerstones of the middle school, which are based on the life and values of Officer Jones, the school’s namesake.  Each year the first four days at the middle school are spent on a service project focused on developing and promoting the cornerstones.  This year the 850 students were asked to bring cans of food and books to be donated to local non-profits. The children were so excited by the effort that it was decided the drives would continue for an additional week.

English Department Chairperson Amy Riebli advocated for donating the books to the Free Bookmobile of Sonoma County.  Ms. Riebli saw the Free Bookmobile in action at the Cotati tree-lighting event last year and thought it was an “amazing concept and was eager to continue to support it.”

Glen Weaver, Director of the Free Bookmobile of Sonoma County, is awed by the generosity of the students at Lawrence E. Jones Middle School.  “It’s inspiring to see the spirit of sharing start at an early age.  The kids did an amazing job with their collecting, bringing in great books for toddlers, early readers, even for teens and adults.  We are honored to facilitate the distribution of these books to promote literacy and the love of reading in our community.  There will be a lot of smiles on the faces of Free Bookmobile patrons!”

A huge thank you to The Ernest L. and Ruth W. Finley Foundation!  The Finley Foundation board recently renewed and expanded their generous annual support of Free Bookmobile operations, which will benefit more than 15,000 patrons this year.  Their investment over the years has provided the keystone of our ability to expand and improve our services, and we are are regularly adding new appearances around Sonoma County as a result.  This includes recent visits to The Children’s Village of Sonoma County, Vigil Light Senior Apartments, and our new monthly stop at the Santa Rosa Marketplace along Kawana Springs Road, which we hope will be an access point for thousands of nearby low-income residents.  Check our schedule page for details.

The Finley Foundation has been a stalwart of support for Sonoma County’s families over many decades.  For helping us promote literacy and share the love of reading, we are extremely grateful!

Did you know that more than half of Sonoma County third-graders read below standard proficiency level? To help remedy that, we are in partnership once again with United Way of the Wine Country and Exchange Bank to bring the gift of literacy to children across the region this summer. You can help by going through your kids’ books and bringing us the ones they have outgrown or simply read too many times! Past years have seen a wonderful response from Sonoma County families as they filled our book bins with thousands of high quality children’s titles for us to pass on to others. Each and every Exchange Bank location is hosting a donation bin through September 10, so now’s the time to get your stack together. We promise to make sure they land in the hands of kids who are otherwise challenged for access to literacy materials.

This is a great project to share among your co-workers, church group, service club or neighbors. Let folks know what you’re up to and invite them to join in the fun — see how many books you can collectively bring in for our shelves…for our children’s future!

Talk about good fortune!  Following our successful grassroots fundraising drive this past winter, we began designing a part-time Program Assistant position to help us expand our services throughout Sonoma County.  What we didn’t anticipate was landing our first choice candidate, Stacy Ruppert.  Stacy first became involved with the Free Bookmobile back in 2011 when she headed United Way of the Wine Country’s annual children’s book drive for us.  She quickly proved her mettle, bringing in 5,000 books the first year and over 8,000 books the second!

Since then she’s been an eager volunteer, including handling much of our social media presence, and subsequently, a hard-working board member.  It’s been a pleasure to have her hit the ground running in her new assistant role, as she already knew much about how the Free Bookmobile works behind the scenes.  Her aid has already freed up large amounts of time for our director/driver, meaning more outreach to the neediest Sonoma County residents.  We served over 3,000 people with high quality books of choice in April and May alone, a 50% increase over our usual pace!  Please join us in welcoming Stacy — she can be reached at info@freebookmobile.org or 703-1834.

What a wonderful surprise! Long-time Geyerville supporters Wes Brubacher and Bobbi Chamberlain recently nominated Free Bookmobile Director Glen Weaver for a regional Jefferson Award, and the word just came in from local media partner KPIX Channel 5 that Glen has indeed been selected. A Jefferson Award is considered a significant recognition, with the goal to inspire others to become involved in their community and engage in public service. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Jr., and Sam Beard founded the American Institute for Public Service in 1972, which started the Jefferson Awards as part of the institute’s mission to build a culture of service. On a local level, Jefferson Awards recipients are ordinary people who do extraordinary things without expectation of recognition or reward.

“It is an incredible honor and surprise to receive the Jefferson Award,” said Glen. “I love promoting reading in our community, and just sharing in the happiness and excitement of the people we serve is my daily reward. In the spirit of the values behind the Jefferson Award, I’m hoping we can inspire others to think about what they have to offer, what they can give back to their communities.”

Glen was also quick to point out just how many individuals and organizations work behind the scenes to make the bookmobile program possible. “Once my family and I made the commitment to do this, incredible energy just came from every direction to help.  Literally thousands of individuals, counting all the folks who have taken the time to bring us great books to give away, have had a helping hand in this important mission,” remarked Glen.

KPIX reporter Sharon Chin interviewed Glen with her film crew, traveling from San Francisco to catch one of the bookmobile’s signature book give-away service events at the COTS Mary Isaak Center in Petaluma.  The video feature aired on Channel 5 Eyewitness News in mid-June and is now available below or at http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/06/18/jefferson-award-winner-gives-gift-of-reading-to-sonoma-county-families/. Glen will be part of a medal ceremony in San Francisco in January, 2015.

Read the full press release by clicking here.