Catalyst Grant Final Report
“Food, Crafts, and Literacy, Oh My!”
Please provide a brief narrative explaining your project and its outcomes.
Skaneateles Library staff visited the Skaneateles Ecumenical Food Pantry twice a month on (the last Tuesday morning and Thursday evening) from March-December 2024. At each visit, we brought books in both Spanish & English for clients from babies-5th grade. The first few months we also brought craft kits but found that the kids weren’t interested in them, the books were the selling point! We stopped bringing them monthly and instead only brought them for special months like Halloween and the holidays.
As the months progressed, we saw a steady increase in the number of clients that passed through the doors which meant that we were giving out more books that we originally anticipated! In talking to the food pantry staff, we learned that their usage had doubled by the end of the year! As usage increased, we realized that we needed to change our focus a bit and put most of our budget towards purchasing new books to give out because we wanted to ensure that we always had a strong selection of books at each of our visit. A challenge that came with this was never knowing who we would be seeing at each visit — how old they were, what their reading level was and if they needed Spanish, English or bilingual titles. This mean that we were ordering new books every month and always had a surplus of titles to ensure that we could meet the needs.
In addition to the food pantry visits, we also increased our Spanish & bilingual resources by adding Spanish language Wonderbooks and a bilingual TonieBox to our circulating collection.
What is the most remarkable accomplishment or finding of your project?
Over the months, we have developed relationships with the families. We’ve begun to learn what the kids like to read and it’s not uncommon for us to be asked multiple times if we really will be back the next month. While we didn’t have books to give to the adults, we also developed relationships with them and it’s not uncommon for them to stop and chat with us while they’re waiting for their turn to go “food shopping.”
How did your project differ from what you originally proposed?
Because of the increased use of the food pantry we ended up shifting our budget lines to prioritize purchasing new books to give out at the food pantry over the crafts and circulating items at the library. For the craft kids, we used previously purchased supplies.
Please provide a brief summary of your evaluation activities and/or results, if available.
Over our 18 visits, we interacted with 284 people of all ages at the food pantry and gave out over 200 books.
Andrea Snyder
Assistant Director, Skaneateles Library
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