How BBBP came to be.
In 2008 I (Seena) returned to Berkeley and got a job driving Berkeley Unified School Buses. I was taking classes to add a Single Subject Language Arts certificate to my 15 Elementary School teaching certificate. I did get that add-on Certificate, but by that time what I’d learned about my hometown on the bus I drove set me on a different path.
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I kept a box of books, free to take, on my bus routes in South Berkeley. I grew up in North Berkeley, and thought I knew a lot about my hometown.
The Bus Book Box started when I decided to clear my storage unit out, including many boxes of books from elementary teaching. The Book Box Rule was, “If you like it you may keep it”. The Book Box sparked conversations with children, and parents. In them I learned that, unlike me and my neighbors in North Berkeley, many children on my routes did not have books falling off shelves all over; did not own a collection of their favorite early childhood favorites.
That made me . . . mad. I decided to Do Something about it. I knew that Something would take all my time and headspace - and that teaching would use that up. Driving the bus gave me more. So, I kept driving.
Informed by early literacy research I’d read for years and continued to - including studies showing the efficacy and economy of simply giving books to babies from the start — I resolved to start a book delivery service that would provide no fewer than 12 books a year to children under age 6 in 3 South Berkeley ZIP Codes.
In 2012 I filed Articles of Incorporation for The Berkeley Baby Book Project, and I began researching how to do that: where to get and store books, how to get addresses, how to deliver them. In 2013, using a Nolo Press book, I filed for 501(c)3 nonprofit status. Not long after that my best friend (our Board President) said her husband saw something about Dolly, and book gifting.
That night I read the entire Imagination Library website and filed amended Articles for The BBBP to enlarge our Service Area. In September 2013 we got our 501(c)3 Letter from the IRS. My mother was our first Donor. I kept driving, kept reading research, and started applying for grants. I got connected to the lead Administrator of Berkeley’s Head Start preschools.
In 2015 we launched an Imagination Library Program. We enrolled about 80 Head Start children. After learning the ins and outs of our IL Enrollment Account, I began taking forms to other Preschools and places serving low-income families. The program grew, slowly. In 2020 we turned on the Online Enrollment form. In 2021 we added ZIP Code 94608 (all of Emeryville and a tiny slice of Oakland) to the Berkeley Program. I retired from BUSD at the end of 2021, and began researching Richmond census data. In mid-2022 I went to the 8 Head Start sites then there, one by one, and began enrolling children. In 2023 I started outreach to other Richmond and San Pablo places serving families.
I look forward to the day we are able to allow Online enrollment for Richmond-San Pablo families. There are 5 to 6,000 children under age 5 in our Service Area there. We need funding in Reserves to absorb the sharp increase in enrollments we expect there, and to keep up with the slower growth to 4,500 to 5,000 we expect there. Multi-year funding commitments are the best!
The day I decided to start on this path, a path I was yet to learn Dolly had already paved, I was looking up at the hills at the end of the day, parked outside the Head Start Preschool on California Street. I thought, “There are books falling off shelves all over up there, and I am meeting kids with few or none on their shelves; I have to do something about that. I knew enough to know that Something would require a nonprofit organization, and I knew how to get started on that, so I did. I’ve never looked back.