YOUR IMPACT
Thank you, Library Champion!
You make an Impact – 2023 Report
Dear Library Champion,
LA County Library Foundation is grateful to you. Thank you for your generosity in supporting your Library – you're brightening lives and building a better future!
Because of you, children, teens, and adults in your community and beyond are learning, growing, and succeeding with Library resources.
Because of you, your Library continues to stand strong as a cornerstone of the community, a force for the freedom to read – a range of ideas, information, and other resources – for everyone.
Your generosity for LA County Library makes an impact. Your support helped in vital ways. With the Foundation, you:
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Championed the right to read, explore, and develop understanding
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Fueled Library programs for all ages, and on a range of topics
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Encouraged connection and built community support by telling the Library's story – about its vital resources and positive impacts on individuals and communities
Please enjoy this look back at 2023 and the impact you and your fellow Library Champions made and continue to make with your support for your Library.
Take joy and pride knowing these achievements are possible because of you. Together, with your Library, you're building a brighter today and tomorrow.
Thank you!
Your LA County Library Foundation
Freedom to Read – and to explore, learn & understand
Literacy makes a difference. It's a path to lifelong learning, to exploration and growth, to connection, to personal and professional success, to fulfillment.
A child who's reading at grade level by third grade will likely graduate from high school. The child who isn't reading is a different story – statistically likely to drop out of school and struggle economically in the years ahead.
Bottom line, your Library knows that strong readers navigate more easily through life. Reading matters.
Your Library works to hook people on reading – and keep them hooked at every stage of life. The wildly popular Summer Discovery Program is a great example of what you support – it's open to all ages, from babies and toddlers and their adults, to children, tweens, teens, and young adults through centenarians.
Number of participants:
49,795
Hours read by your community:
50,000+
Incidents of joy, connection, success:
Countless
Literacy takes many forms and starts with our earliest Library goers. Your generosity again made a difference, fueling programs for babies and toddlers, tweens, teens, and adults – from adding books, ebooks and audiobooks to the Library's collection, to engaging young people with Teen Read Month, to supporting adult literacy and author talks, including Trailblazers in Conversation with Seattle Seahawks linebacker Uchenna Nwosu.
Foundations and corporations joined you in these efforts. Thanks to a Mellon Foundation grant for the arts at Claremont Helen Renwick Library young library goers (babies through teens) enjoyed arts, music, and theater workshops. The Library also added nearly 700 youth-focused titles to its collection.
Image: LA County Library
LA Opera delights babies and toddlers (and their adults!) with its interactive BambinO at Claremont Helen Renwick Library. Thank you to the Mellon Foundation.
Image: LA County Library/Steven Georges
Library Youth Services staff curates booklists and activities (in person and virtual) throughout the year to hook young people on reading and the Library, including October's Teen Read Month.
Image: LA County Library/Michael Owen Baker
Your Library is a place to read, learn, and connect - in-person and virtually.
Image: LA County Library/Monica Almeida
Author and child poverty advocate David Ambroz spoke and signed books at the Chicano Resource Center at East Los Angeles Library.
Big Outdoor sponsored a conversation at East Los Angeles Library between author and child poverty advocate David Ambroz and Library Director Skye Patrick as part of the Library's Heart & Hand Book Talk series.
A Place Called Home chronicles David's experiences growing up unhoused and in the foster care system, and challenges each of us to move from empathy to action.
Speaking of action, you and your Library are standing strong for the freedom to read – to explore, learn, and understand.
In October 2023, LA County Library joined a national coalition of libraries in Books Unbanned, an initiative to counter increasing challenges and bans to titles geared toward teens and by or about Black, Indigenous, people of color, or LGBTQIA+ authors or communities.
LA County Library's Books Unbanned program champions the freedom to read – providing a Library card for any teen anywhere in California to access any ebook or audiobook, including banned books, in the Library’s entire digital collection.
Your freedom to read is a fundamental right and the public library is a cornerstone of our democratic society. Your Library Foundation continues to support the Library's essential role - raising funds to add ebooks and audiobooks to the Library's digital collection.
The goal? To ensure that teens can access a range of ideas, information, and resources so they can explore, learn, and develop their own informed perspectives to strengthen themselves and their communities.
Thank you, Library Champion, for being part of this vital work to protect and promote the right to read freely.
Fueling lifelong learning with programs for all ages
Following the pandemic, people across the nation reported a sense of isolation. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called this a health epidemic of loneliness.
Your Library, with your support, stepped in – continuing innovative virtual programs for learning and entertainment, and encouraging people to return and reengage physically with the Library.
From Library Fests – celebrations at libraries with activities for all ages - to community outreach, arts, music, and science programs, your Library found ways to involve and connect children, teens, adults, and you. Because your Library supports individual and community well-being.
Images: LA County Library, LA County Library/Mayra Beltran Vasquez
Tweens and teens at Pico Rivera Library were thrilled to embark on a Great White Shark Expedition with Ocean Adventures as part of the Edison International-funded Oceans & Marine Life: Careers in STEAM for Youth. The Aquarium of Pacific also hosted a series of virtual programs.
The eight month-long science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) program included virtual and in-person programs, with a focus on underresourced communities.
More than 1600 tweens and teens and 31 libraries participated. Significantly, nearly three-quarters of the youth attending in-person programs reported an interest in exploring a future career in oceans and marine life.
Library Fests across the county brought people of all ages back into the library - pictured here, exploring a book at Rowland Heights Library.
Library Champions supported the Library's 44th Annual Bookmark Contest.
10,721 kindergarten through 12th grade students submitted a bookmark design.
Los Angeles County Supervisors selected 20 designs – five each from grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 – to print as bookmarks.
If you haven't picked one (or more!) up yet, head to your favorite library. They're in every library and in many places across LA County.
The bookmarks showcase student creativity and remind each of us the Library is here – with welcoming spaces, a physical and digital collection, and connections to people, places, and resources beyond Library walls.
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Library programs make an impact. Janet Barajas: THEN - 1982, Grade 5 Sunkist 2nd Annual LA County Library Bookmark Contest winner) and NOW, re-imagining her original bookmark – a commissioned artist and a stylist in West Hollywood.
Seattle Seahawks linebacker Uchenna Nwosu knows that connection and education matter, and that your Library delivers.
So when he wanted to give back to youth in his hometown community of Carson, California, he made a three-year gift to hire and support a Peer Advocate as part of the Library's My Brother's Keeper Program.
The My Brother’s Keeper Peer Advocate program gives young people of color an opportunity to gain real-world skills that can be applied to school and work. They work within high-need communities to educate and engage young people and their families about Library programs and services.
Each Peer Advocate also creates a project based on their interest – past projects have included a financial literacy game for teens, poetry workshops, a seed garden, and more.
We're delighted to thank Uchenna and welcome Megan, a Carson resident, as Carson Library's first Peer Advocate.
Image: LA County Library/Michael Owen Baker
Uchenna Nwosu with Carson Library Peer Advocate Megan. Uchenna Nwosu is a Library Champion who is also a linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks. Uchenna grew up in Carson, Califorina where Megan is a My Brother's Keeper Peer Advocate at his hometown Carson Library.
Encouraging connection, telling the Library's story
A shout out to YOU, Library Champion!
Because of you, your Library continues to enrich lives and communities. Thank you for your generosity – for fueling Library programs and resources, for powering your Foundation to build community support and raise awareness and funds for your Library.
Literally thousands of individual donors power your Library and Foundation, joined by businesses, nonprofits, and foundations.
Amazon again provided a very generous and unrestricted donation – enabling the Foundation the flexibility to best meet Library needs to serve our community of readers and life-long learners. Thank you!
Images: LA County Library and LA County Library/Michael Owen Baker
Learning and exploring with puppet making - Theatre of Hearts workshop at Claremeong Helen Renwick Library. Yep, the Library is my Happy Place!
Thank you, Library Champions, for the many ways you give:
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Monthly and one-time gifts
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Gifts from your Donor Advised Fund
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Donations from your paycheck
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Multiplying your impact with a matching gift from your employer
- Celebrating loved ones and milestones with a tribute or memorial gift
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Telling your Library Story
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Sharing your love for your Library with future generations by including LA County Library Foundation in your will or other estate plans
Again, thank you for generously supporting your Library!
The Library recently unveiled its five year strategic plan, Where Community Happens. And naturally, you and your fellow Library Champions play a starring role.
Collaborate with LA County Library Foundation to expand visibility for philanthropic support and identify new partners that can serve as stable funding partners.
--LA County Library Strategic Plan 2024-2028: Where Community Happens
Image: Monica Almeida
This plan of action is about and for you. And it will work because of you.
You, with your Library Foundation, supported the plan's development – from strategic sessions to engaging multiple community voices.
Now the plan calls on the Foundation – you and your fellow Library Champions – to continue telling the Library's story. To continue sharing and advocating and supporting the value of your Library.
Why? To make more individuals, corporations, and foundations aware of your Library. And to increase financial and community support for your Library.
Because public funds don't cover the cost of all the crucial resources your Library provides. You, Library Champion, with your LA County Library Foundation, provide vital support for your Library. You make an impact.
Because of you, your Library is brightening lives and communities.
Thank you!
Your LA County Library Foundation
Questions? Comments?
Call or email Andrea Carroll, Executive Director
562.940.4189 and acarroll@lacolibraryfoundation.org
