 Hi, I'm Nicole Basini, and I'm here to talk about Big Lift Little Libraries, which is an interesting project. I can't really take credit for it because it wasn't really my idea, and I haven't done all of the logistics, so I'm really excited to talk to you about it. I am the cheerleader for it, though. The Big Lift is an effort in San Mateo County to basically go from having 58% of children in the county reading at grade level by third grade to 80% reading at grade level by third grade by 2020. So it's a big, big jump. And we all know, I don't have to explain to any of you how important reading by third grade is, how closely reading by third grade is tied to your long-term success in almost every measure. So the Big Lift is an effort on the part of the Peninsula Policy Leadership Council, I think that's right. I'm going to mess it up. It has many names. So it's basically coming together of multiple, multiple organizations to work on these different initiatives that will help us reach this goal in San Mateo County. So providing quality preschool for three to four year olds. That is a huge change. It's a really expensive change. We've seen in other areas of the country where they've gone, where they've been able to do universal pre-K that it's made a big difference. Preschool just has a huge impact on kids' long-term ability to succeed. And we want to sustain that progress through better attendance, inspiring summers, you know, having, engaging things for children to do in the summer, and then family engagement, getting families involved in education. So as I said, this is an effort of a huge number of organizations coming together, nonprofits, we have local government organizations, we have business, all kind of coming together around these issues. That effort is led by the Cation County of San Mateo and the, remember, sorry. So it's a big effort from multiple organizations. So basically this is a huge collaborative effort to do these really, really huge things. So how do throughout the county have any tie-in to this? Basically the leaders in the Big Lift Collaborative asked the Peninsula Library System Libraries and San Mateo County Library if we would be interested in spearheading a Big Lift Little Library effort. We've all heard of Little Libraries here. It's something that the organizers of the collaborative were really excited about, really enthusiastic about because it's very tangible, right? It's a way that people can get involved with this huge, huge effort that's going to have far wide-ranging impact, but a way people can get involved in the short term in a way that's very manageable. Like we're all excited about universal pre-K, but what can I do about that? Today, so one of the organizers said to me early on in the project, you know, this really seems to have an outside, get an outsized response, right? It's a small thing that people can get involved with that promotes reading and promotes the things that we're working on, but isn't as intimidating as universal pre-K. So the goal of the Big Lift Little Libraries is to encourage a culture of reading in San Mateo County, increase access to books for children and families at the point of need. So anywhere where children and families are waiting in line, anywhere where parents might need children to calm down, settle down, let's come read a book together. Anywhere where a book could be like a solution to problem, an antsy kid, or an exciting way to get your child involved in something or a distraction. So involving all of the county in the Big Lift. So the efforts for the Big Lift, all the funds that are being raised currently through local tax dollars and a recent federal grant, those are all going to go to our highest need communities, right? And they should as we start the effort towards the preschool initiative. But this project is something that can happen in any community, can happen very easily in any community. And it's another way to create resident support for the Big Lift initiative. It helps get the word out about the Big Lift and get people excited about the Big Lift. So the Big Lift collaborative organizers brought together San Mateo County Library, the Peninsula Library System, and Hands On Bay Area, which is a non-profit organization that basically organizes volunteer events. And does a lot around volunteer engagement. So Hands On Bay Area designed the project. They designed the little libraries. They came up with plans for the little libraries. And they've led several volunteer events to build and paint and fill the little libraries. And they did that with Google and Genentech in late spring. And so we got around, I'm gonna say around 50 libraries from those efforts. And then we're going to have ongoing projects through Hands On Bay Area with their corporate and non-profit partners to build more libraries. So this is a list of where we've been able to put libraries. So through this collaborative, we've been able to reach a lot of different, as I said, non-profit business, local government partners. And Stephanie Conrad is in the audience, that's Stephanie. Stephanie has really handled the logistics part of this, making sure that the little libraries and the books get out to all of our partners. And she's done a really excellent job of that. So as you can see on here, we've got them throughout the county. We're continuing to grow. There's a lot of interest in putting these there in. Right now they're at the YMCA, the Ecumenical Hunger Program. Add a couple of parks and parks and rec departments. Elementary schools, boys and girls clubs. We're gonna be partnering with Kaiser and San Mateo County Credit Union. So there's a lot of different organizations that are interested in bringing these little libraries into their places. So that's really exciting. And these are just some pictures. So this is one of a little library in someone's front yard. And this one is the Human Service Agency office as well. So they're being used very well. We've gotten multiple requests for more books. We're working with our partners to give them suggestions for how to do book drives, get books on their own. We have books that we can give them as well. And then we're also discussing with some of our partners, could we get some grants to keep their individual little libraries filled? Because with some of them, the idea is take a book, leave a book. But sometimes it's just take a book, which is fine. Because it's all to the good of increasing home libraries and getting books in children's hands. So there's more information about the project on our website. And again, I wanna thank Stephanie Conrad and also Dan Bettencourt, who I don't think is here today for their work on this project, because without that. And I think the only thing I wanna leave you with is just that this is a project that came up really last minute. And it was, as I said multiple times, it wasn't the library driving it. We were being asked to participate from multiple different organizations. And I think that the message of this project for me is to just be open and flexible enough to take on these opportunities as they come up and be willing to jump in. It's allowed us to make contacts with organizations throughout the county. And it's allowed us to kind of reinforce some relationships that we already have. So it's a fun project, it's exciting, thank you.