Books
Students
Schools
Volunteers
Numbers reflect current school year to date ’22-’23.
Book Buddies is a program of the SAISD Foundation that provides tens of thousands of free children’s books to students in San Antonio ISD schools. The pivotal goal of our program is to help children grow their own home libraries enabling them to be strong and proud readers. Through Book Buddies, volunteers sort through books by grade level, assess the condition of the books, clean them, and place them into boxes to be distributed to the 12,000 students we aim to serve for the 2022-2023 school year.
Book Buddies works with book resellers and accepts books donated from company-sponsored or community-wide drives to collect children’s books throughout San Antonio and the surrounding area. Since 2017 the international book reseller, Better World Books, has donated hundreds of thousands of books (we just cover the shipping costs) which volunteers (like you) sort and box up for distribution.
During the 2021-2022 school year, over 55,000 books were delivered to 14,881 children in 29 SAISD schools enabling them to become readers for pleasure and proud book owners. Our goal for the 2022-2023 school year is to deliver nearly 87,000 books to children at 45 SAISD campuses.
HERE ARE 4 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP WITH THE MISSION OF GETTING BOOKS IN KIDS’ HANDS:
1. Donate your time by becoming 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. Click here to Sign up on POINT.
2. Organize a book drive.
Click here to find your “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.
3. Make a gift at saisdfoundation.com/donate and note “Book Buddies” in the comment section.
$100 will get 500 books
$350 will get 1,200 books (one shipping container)
$8,000 will get 40,000 books (one shipment)
$40,000 will support an entire year of Book Buddies
4. Help share our efforts.
Join our volunteer Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/saisdnationvolunteers
Bring a friend and sign up for another Book Buddies shift.
Sign up to receive the SAISD Foundation newsletter: Who We Are – SAISD Foundation
View our past newsletters Past Newsletters – SAISD Foundation
THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS PARTNERS!
Book Buddies is made possible thanks to the support of Better World Books, Port San Antonio, the Najim Charitable Foundation, The Frankie Casseb Youth Literacy Club, Literati, The Texas Cavaliers, EcoBox, and Whataburger.
