Story and a Snack

"Story and a Snack" is a is a new program from New City Initiative. Story and a Snack provides sit-down reading time and healthy and nutritious snacks for young children in families that experience homelessness. By supporting nutrition and literacy for these children, Story and a Snack will help to lay a foundation for early reading and school success, helping them exit the cycle of poverty and homelessness for good. This program takes place every Monday in JOIN's Day Space Family room from 12 - 1 pm.

Here’s what one of our volunteers had to say about the experience of reading to children from homeless families:

“My experience being a volunteer with the Story and a Snack program has been a joy and rewarding one. Spending time with the young children and their family members or caregivers reading stories, singing songs and playing with bubbles has been delightful.
Sitting around the table sharing a fresh snack of ripe berries some cheese and conversation with the families has been wonderful. Giving back my love of reading to children and seeing how much they enjoy being read to have been delightful.” ~ Fran Berg

Since, April 4th, the story began for Story and a Snack and we are excited it keeps going. WE WANT YOU… to be a part of the story. There are many ways one can be involved. See our current needs below:

Volunteering – Click here to sign up to Read from 12-2pm on Mondays

Books – Every week families are encouraged to take age appropriate books home for their child and with that we are constantly depleting our supply of books, so we can always use more books. Please click here to see our wish list of books. (Remember to sign up for AmazonSmile so you can give back to New City with every Amazon purchase.)

Book labeling supplies – To assist parents and volunteers we plan to institute a color labeling system that will allow books to be identifiable, based on various categories: language/age of reader/books that stay on JOIN shelves/books to take/Storytime book bin. Re-shelving books is difficult without a reference label. A Color Code Key will be displayed to assist parent and volunteers to access books of interest for their young ones.

New or gently used toys 

The toys pictured below are in the Multnomah County Library Story-time bins at Gregory Heights. They have been divided into young and very young groups. They are sturdy enough to withstand frequent sanitizing and all are a “safe” size (no choke hazard) for small mouths.

Donations

Generous gifts help purchase snack, toys, and books that are not donated to enhance this program! Click here to make a meaningful gift.