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Through Book Buddies, we providetens of thousands of free children’s books to students
The pivotal goal of our program is to help children grow their own home libraries enabling them to be strong and proud readers.Volunteers sort through books by grade level, assess the condition of the books, clean them, and place them into boxes to be distributed to San Antonio ISD students.
During the Past Two School Years
54000
BOOKS
DELIVERED TO
14800
CHILDREN
During the 2023-2024 school year, the SAISD Foundation is thrilled to announce an exciting new endeavor, the Book Buddies Bus! This captivating mobile book bus has been ingeniously converted from an actual school bus and will deliver over 50,000 books to students in San Antonio’s urban core! Through the Book Buddies Bus program, our goal is to provide six books for each student.
Our sincere gratitude goes to SAISD Transportation and Better World Books for their invaluable partnership. We are dedicated to fundraising to address a specific gap in the 2023-2024 school year, in addition to providing four gently used books to all grade levels we are seeking funds to offer two new books to grades 1-5, enriching their reading experience. With an estimated cost of approximately $10 per student, your support is pivotal in ensuring the success of this initiative. Join us in our mission to provide every student with access to books by giving to this transformative endeavor. Your support will help us empower students, build home libraries, and nurture a lifelong love for learning.
4 ThingsYou Can Do
To help get books in kids’ hands.
- Become a Book Buddies volunteer.
Our “Book Buddies World Headquarters” is at Port San Antonio, just off Hwy. 90 and SW 36th Street. It’s easy to get to from any part of town. We have volunteer hours most Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon. If you have a group who would like to work together, we can make a special time for you during the week. It’s a great community-spirited activity for families, too. NEW opportunities during the Book Buddies Bus school visits are also now open for volunteers!
- Organize a book drive.
Get your copy of the “How to Organize a Successful Book Drive for Book Buddies” toolkit.
Follow these tips to host a book drive in your neighborhood or at your church, business, or school. Gently used or new books appropriate for preschool, elementary and middle school-aged students as well as culturally relevant books and books in Spanish are greatly needed. Financial and in-kind donations are always appreciated.
- Make a Gift.
- $10 supports one student book bundle
- $50 provides supplies to clean and prep books
- $200 supports book bundles for an entire class
- $2,000 provides a half shipment of used books
- $40,000 will provide new books for one semester
- Give Now and note “Book Buddies” in the comment section.
- Help share our efforts.
- Bring a friend and sign up for another Book Buddies shift.
- Sign up to receive the SAISD Foundation newsletter: Who We Are – SAISD Foundation
Thanks to Ourgenerous partners!
We could not do this important work without help from our sponsors:
Better World Books, Port San Antonio, the Najim Charitable Foundation, The Frankie Casseb Youth Literacy Club, The Texas Cavaliers, Whataburger and the SAISD Facilities Department.
With the new Book Buddies Bus launch for the 2023-2024 school year, we are especially thankful for our partnership with SAISD Transportation and San Antonio Retired Teachers Association.
