Enter a small organization called the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (WePAC). It was helping schools in the community and noticed that more and more libraries were sitting dark with dusty shelves and closed doors.
The organizers decided to bring light into the darkness, one public school library at a time.
"We were working in a range of areas at the time in West Philly, everything from tax preparation to step teams. But we had always worked in the area of child literacy," said David Florig, WePAC's executive director. "When we found out some years ago that many of the schools with whom we worked didn't have functioning libraries, we thought this would be a perfect focus."
Focusing only on reopening and staffing (with volunteers) once-shuttered public school libraries, WePAC plugged into a growing unmet need within our schools, particularly at the elementary level. Funding cuts and staff shifts have forced many schools to surrender their libraries (and their paid librarians) to other priorities. To have a group come in, clean up, stock, and then staff these vacant havens was too good an offer to pass up.
One library quickly became two. Two became four, and now WePAC has opened 10 public elementary school libraries and donated 30,000 books since its beginning in 2009. It currently circulates 2,500 books per month to students and is opening its 11th library at the William Longstreth Elementary School this week. The Longstreth library had been closed for 10 years, the space given over to a conference area. Now, its agenda will be opening young minds through reading.
