Bookmobile News

We have always been big fans of people and organizations that emphasize doing over talking, which is probably why we’re so fond of the Rotary Club of Rohnert Park-Cotati. In fact they meet at 7 Am so they can still have a full day of doing afterward! Several of their members have gone above and beyond the club’s generous financial support to pitch in making the Free Bookmobile a better program. We were delighted to reconnect with all of them recently, and to accept a grant check that will ensure area residents get consistent access to the wonderful books on our shelves.

Our local routes include monthly service near downtown Cotati, plus regular visits to Rancho Cotate High School, Gold Ridge Preschool, Pasitos Playgroups at Rohnert Park Tower Apartments, Rohnert Park Boys & Girls Club, Vida Nueva Supportive Housing, Las Casitas de Sonoma Mobile Homes, and Rohnert Park Health Center. We also utilize Rotary funds towards special events like the Redwood Empire Food Bank Summer Lunch program at Alicia Park, the Cotati Kids Day Festival, Cotati Tree Lighting Ceremony, Pacific Islander Festival and the Latino Family Summit. Thank you!

Ready to celebrate with us? We have just reached a major program milestone: the Free Bookmobile has now given away 250,000 high quality books of choice! Founded in 2009, the Free Bookmobile was an all-volunteer family service project running on weekends until July of 2011, when it became a full-time staffed operation. Now the bookmobile makes approximately 40 – 50 stops per month throughout Sonoma County, serving 25,000 people each year. “It’s fun to think about all the wonderful books that have passed through our hands,” reflected Glen Weaver, Free Bookmobile founder and director. “But what really keeps me motivated is the knowledge that all those books have delighted and educated our community, ending up in new homes completely free of charge, no questions asked.”

The Free Bookmobile prioritizes service to those who may be challenged for access to quality reading material, including children, seniors with mobility issues, low-income and geographically isolated persons. It also spends a significant amount of time in preschools, engaging with inquisitive minds, to help foster a culture of reading within families and entire neighborhoods. “The ever-expanding use of phones and other digital entertainment devices is not a good thing for developing brains,” noted Weaver. “We are fighting back by offering compelling, modern books on a broad range of subjects. Kids love the bookmobile and come running when we drive up because they feel like they’ve won something special just by coming on board,” he continued.

Many of the program’s gently used books are generous donations from the local public. The Free Bookmobile staff works hard to build additional relationships with publishers, distributors, authors, and resellers to acquire brand new titles for its shelves, especially for its youngest readers. Funding for book purchases through programs such as Community Foundation Sonoma County’s iREAD initiative, which promotes daily reading to children, has also been extremely helpful. Major operational funding for the Free Bookmobile’s non-profit mission comes from the Ernest L. and Ruth W. Finley Foundation.

We have been the premier program of the Sonoma County Public Library Foundation (SCPLF) since 2014. New SCPLF Board President Adriana Arrizon recently emphasized the benefits of our outreach model and its ability to respond to local needs. ”Our community is rebuilding through unprecedented disasters and trauma that affects everyone and mostly our most vulnerable community members. Now more than ever it is critical for children, families, and seniors living in isolation, rural and low-income areas in Sonoma County to experience hope by having access to books from the Free Bookmobile” said Arrizon.

Many thanks to all who propelled us on this amazing journey — it has truly been a massive group effort. From the thousands of local families who have donated books to the dozens of volunteers who have given their passion and time to the generous souls who have provided funding, we are so very grateful for your partnership!

The stalwart Codding Foundation has once again stepped forward to support the Free Bookmobile’s children services! The cornerstone of our program, youth outreach is vital to addressing barriers to access that restrict educational opportunities. Kids can achieve up to three additional years of schooling just as a result of having quality books in the home, and we are so happy to provide them. Reading is also a wonderful investment in the development of communication skills, certain to be increasingly important to professional and social success as we continue our trajectory as an increasingly information-based society. We want to express our deep gratitude for Codding Foundation’s long-term commitment to our work on these important goals.

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. President Connie Codding has been very active in local philanthropy for a number of years, which includes service on the boards of PDI Surgery Center, Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific Board of Advocates in Sonoma County, Sonoma Paradiso Foundation and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Sonoma State University. Thank you, Connie — we admire your efforts!

It’s partnerships like these that make our service great! The Free Bookmobile is once again one of the primary beneficiaries of United Way’s annual Children’s Book Drive, which will allow us to boost our book volume and quality ahead of the important summer giving season. We are now giving away more than 50,000 books each year, so help with collections is a crucial component of our operation. You can easily participate — just bring the books your kids have finished to any of the participating locations below during the month of March! We are looking for both English and Spanish/Bilingual material in good condition, and of course the more recent/relevant, the better. Here’s additional information from United Way, including contact information if you would like to go above and beyond being a donor:

United Way Women United is proud to present the United Way Children’s Book Drive. During the book drive, community members rally in support of education and childhood literacy by donating new and gently used English and Spanish children’s books. Books are collected during the drive and distributed to kids for free through United Way’s education initiatives and the Free Bookmobile of Sonoma County, Sonoma County Human Development, Guerneville School, and Roseland Elementary.  Women United has committed to make a difference in early childhood education in our community, and with your help, we can give all kids a chance to learn and be successful throughout school and life.

Join us to get free books to our area’s kids!  The magic begins as kids choose their books and young minds are opened up to possibilities and worlds which come alive through words on the pages. We need your support to rewrite the story of education for so many in the community.

To learn more about sponsoring the book drive or serving as a book donation drop off location, please contact Kelly at 707-528-4485 xt.115 or kelly.musca@unitedwaywinecountry.org.

When:  March 1 – March 31, 2018

We’re happy to announce another way to support the Free Bookmobile of Sonoma County! If you’re an Oliver’s Market shopper or have been considering becoming one, you should know they offer a Community Card that gives 3% of your purchase totals to the local charity of your choice. The Free Bookmobile is now one of the programs you can designate as your beneficiary. The best part is that this won’t cost you anything extra, it’s part of the popular eScrip program that helps so many organizations nationwide.

It’s easy to sign up: just request a card from any checker at any Oliver’s Market. If you have a few minutes to complete the registration there on-site, your purchase will immediately create dividends for us, as will every shopping trip you make thereafter. Or you can register online later with the number on your new card. Just click here to activate it. More information is available here.

Over $300,000 went to hundreds of deserving local charities in 2016, and since the program began, over $2 million has been raised to support our community. Many thanks to Oliver’s for this sharing and for including the Free Bookmobile’s important literacy outreach in their program choices!

We are so pleased to continue our close relationship with friends throughout the Healdsburg & Geyserville areas, including the people who support those travels. HealdsburgForever.org has made a seventh-straight annual grant to make sure we keep returning to their neighborhoods! This must mean we’re doing good things for the children, families, adults and seniors that call the region home. We look forward in 2018 to bringing those benefits to all who now know what delights await them inside the big green library on wheels, at sites such as schools, medical clinics, farmworker housing, and low-income senior apartments.

Healdsburg Forever (formerly the Healdsburg Area Fund) is a community endowment created by citizens in 2003 to provide a dependable income stream for annual grants to support nonprofit organizations serving community needs in Healdsburg and Geyserville. An affiliate of Community Foundation Sonoma County, the Healdsburg Forever Fund has grown to over $1.4 million and secured pledges that will sustain their mission for generations to come. To date, they have granted more than $760,000 to over 56 applicants to help manage program and operational costs for nonprofit organizations.

We salute this smart and effective path to local philanthropy. Healdsburg Forever, indeed!

At the Free Bookmobile of Sonoma County, we love to talk about leveraging resources. We leverage books that are sitting idle into gifts for the community, gifts that educate, inspire and include. The good folks out at Sonoma Raceway know a thing about leverage, too. They put their resource, one of the most exciting racetracks in the country, to great use between competitions to raise money for children’s charities! If you are a fan or just like to be around high-octane thrills, please check out their full schedule of activities for 2018 by clicking here. You can bring out your vehicle for some drag racing, attend a pre-event banquet, or even bid for a “Ride of a Lifetime” experience with a top IndyCar driver! All proceeds benefit local programs like ours.

We are honored to once again be a part of their grantee family. Their support means more children will receive magical visits from the Free Bookmobile throughout 2018, and will get to come on board to choose great books to take home and keep as long as they want! Though we emphasize early outreach that makes the most overall impact, we make sure that kids of ALL ages are included, from preschool all the way up through high school. And each year we grow our book donation relationships, meaning the books we offer just get better and better.

Big huge thanks to Speedway Children’s Charities for making use of Sonoma Raceway in a way that benefits the entire community!

When we started giving away books to people throughout Sonoma County, some said it was a quaint idea. They said that books were a dying artifact of the pre-digital age, and that kids wouldn’t be interested. We’re glad we didn’t listen! Because it turned out that not only do children still love to read books printed on real paper, but they love to be read to by their family members. And it’s a good thing, because these activities turn out to be crucially important in the development of language centers in young brains.

Community Foundation of Sonoma County, in partnership with the Cradle to Career coalition, is at the front in supporting our local families’ early reading habits. One of their simplest yet most important programs is iREAD, the promotion of reading in the home to young children. The Free Bookmobile is delighted to have earned renewal of grant funding to continue our work in supplying the books these families will need, especially low-income, rural, and otherwise access-challenged families, as well as education and encouragement. We had a great first year on the job and look forward to expanding our reach in 2018, serving 0 – 5 year-olds throughout the region, including dedicated visits to AVANCE Parenting Classes and Pasitos playgroups for young families who are primarily Spanish-speaking.

Reading to a child in your life is one of the most important things you can do to help them enter kindergarten ready to learn and succeed in school!

As a parent or family member you can:

• READ TO YOUR CHILD EVERY DAY.  Just fifteen minutes a day makes a huge difference in your child’s language development, and helps them be ready to learn in school.
• READ FROM DAY ONE.  The first eight months of a baby’s life is a peak period for language development.
• READ IN ANY LANGUAGE–Or use the book to tell a story in your home language.
• READ EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, from street signs to cereal boxes.
• NARRATE YOUR DAY: Talk with your child while you’re doing activities together.
• ANYONE CAN READ TO CHILDREN: Older siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents.

We are deeply grateful to the Bethlehem Foundation for their expanded support toward our 2018 program year! Bethlehem is our primary backer for the important services we provide to local senior citizens and will help us reach more than 3,500 elders over the next 12 months. Much of this outreach will happen right at these individuals’ doorsteps, at low-income apartment complexes and senior living facilities. This means that mobility challenges will not be a barrier and these eager readers will be able to count on regular appearances by their favorite free rolling library. The Free Bookmobile helps folks stay connected to their culture, their community, and their grandchildren — we encourage seniors to take extra books to read to all the little ones in their lives.

Bethlehem Foundation’s creation is a unique and inspiring story: Formed on September 16, 2013, it was funded with proceeds from the sale of 801 Tupper Street, a 159-unit apartment building located in Santa Rosa, California. The building was known as the Bethlehem Towers, a high-rise apartment community serving low- to very low-income seniors. Bethlehem Towers opened its doors in 1972 and was managed by a volunteer Board of Directors for 40 years. When the 40-year HUD loan that financed the community was paid off, the Board was approached by Reiner Communities, a firm that acquires and manages multifamily affordable housing properties, which agreed to complete an extensive renovation and extend the affordability of the project for an additional 55 years. The Board of Directors of Bethlehem Towers, Inc. saw this as a win-win situation. The housing for low-income seniors could remain in place, and proceeds from the sale could fund this new foundation dedicated to promoting an enhanced quality of life for senior adults residing in Sonoma County, California.

The Free Bookmobile is very proud to be a part of those enhancement efforts. Thank you!

With the devastating wildfires displacing so many of our friends and neighbors, it was a privilege to put our rolling resource into action visiting the fire evacuation centers across Sonoma County. While many of the adults we encountered were hopeful about the condition of their homes, some already knew that they had lost everything. Our book-giving service was a small consolation in a disaster that will deeply change the region for years to come. But we were there to listen to their stories, and to offer an opportunity to relieve their stress and anxiety, at least for a while, by getting lost in a good book. Fortunately our appearances were especially helpful for the displaced children who did not have much else to do.

On our tour we witnessed a tremendous outpouring of support from all corners of our community. Everywhere we went there were volunteers lined up to give whatever was needed, and stockpiles of crucial supplies coming in daily. What an inspiring demonstration of people helping each other directly! Peer-to-peer support is the foundation of the Free Bookmobile’s program model and it was on dramatic display here when the chips were down. For our part, we are now seeking out the neighborhoods and schools that are hosting families most affected by the fires, so we can prioritize them on our routes. Favorite books on the shelves are part of what makes a house a home, and we’re anxious to help people replace what they’ve lost.