They are Outta Here!

Last Thursday afternoon, after just a few hours of loading, the last HISD truck pulled away from our warehouse, which means only one thing – THE BOOKS ARE ON THEIR WAY! We blew kisses and waved good-bye to them, thinking about all of the months spent collecting, sorting and boxing them, along with all of the hands that made it possible for this to happen. And while the warehouse is not completely empty, everything that was ready to go has been sent. What a feeling.

But that’s not the end! There’s more!! We are gearing up for the individual school celebrations, which begin next month. Each of the schools listed below will celebrate the love of reading and the excitement of adding to or starting their home libraries with their students, and during the celebrations, each student will select and bring home 6 books of their very own. For many of these children, these are their very first books – a moment we are very happy to know that they will never say again.

As our minds are want to do sometimes, we also thought of all of the data that went into that moment, and after some number crunching from behind the scenes, we thought you would like to see what a very exciting year focused on reading looks like in numbers. Because we might lose you in all of this data, though, on behalf of all of us at Books Between Kids, we want to say thank you to all those who have donated their time, money and books to make Year 2 possible.

And, while these numbers are terrific and we can’t believe that together we have been able to do so much in such a short amount of time, we ask that everyone bear in mind that we have a long way to go – so no resting! With more than 90,000 Houston ISD elementary-aged children at or below the poverty line, there are a great many children we haven’t made it to yet. Even with a steady growth of 5 schools per year, it will be years before we are able to reach even half of these children. Please help us grow, by donating your gently-used children’s books, your time, or by sponsoring our organization’s efforts financially.

Books donated to BBK this school year	153,800
Increase from 2013	53,400
% increase from 2013	35%
Books being distributed next month	140,257
Boxes full of books	1,768
Pallets of boxes	71
HISD delivery trucks needed to haul them all away	8
Students receiving books	19,358
Increase from May 2013	30%
Elementary school campuses	32
Increase from May 2013:	10 campuses
Hours served by volunteers (thank you!!)	1558

HISD Campuses for 2014:
Benavidez ES
Blackshear ES
Bonham ES
Braeburn ES
Brookline ES
Bruce ES
Cunningham ES
Dogan ES
Durham ES
Emerson ES
Foerster ES
Foster ES
Frost ES
Grissom ES
Hartsfield ES
N Q Henderson ES
Janowski ES
Kashmere Gardens ES
Lewis ES
Looscan ES
Mading ES
C Martinez ES
McGowen ES
Northline ES
Paige ES
Petersen ES
Pugh ES
Rusk ES
Shearn ES
Sinclair ES
Tijerina ES
Wesley ES

Organizations that volunteered as a group (5 or more):
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
The Briarwood School
Braeburn Elementary
Sharpstown International School
Barbara Bush Houston Center for Literacy
Chase Bank
Pines Church
Gamma Alpha Omega
Alpha Psi Lambda
Mading Elementary
Brookline Elementary
Levi Strauss & Company
Lewis Elementary
McGowen Elementary
Congregation Brith Shalom
Boy Scouts of America, Sam Houston Area Council
Cristo Rey Jesuit College Prep
Lamar High School Key Club
Houston Freethought Oasis
Trafton Academy
Pair Houston
U of H Accounting Society
Foster Elementary
St. John’s School
Lone Star College X-Presate
U of H National Society of Collegiate Scholars