About
Too many children in the Bay Area live in homes without books and attend schools and programs where books are in short supply. Encouraging reading is not enough when families and schools do not have books.
The East Bay Children’s Book Project was founded to help build literacy by putting books into the hands of children who have little or no access to them. Working through individuals and organizations who help children in need, the East Bay Children’s Book Project has given out over 300,000 free books since opening its doors in May 2005.
Our books are picked up and given directly to children in need by teachers, social workers, health care professionals, community outreach groups, housing authority employees, and police officers. Some are used by schools, daycare and community centers, homeless shelters, and hospitals to create libraries at their sites. Our clients determine how best to meet the needs of the children with whom they work.
The graph below shows our growth over the last 12 month. Blue bars represent books donated to us, and green bars represent books we’ve given away.
Books donated and books given away each month
The East Bay Children’s Book Project is proud to work with many wonderful Oakland and other Bay Area organizations to promote literacy and learning. Please take a moment to view our list of partner organizations. Please also patronize those businesses that display our bags for people to leave books in; these businesses help us collect many of the books that we distribute!
