Our Summer Book Drive for Stanton Elementary School

By June 1, 2016 August 1st, 2023 Blog

Our family’s volunteer work at Stanton ES began more than a decade ago through the effort of Linda Kuzmack and the Girl Scouts at Chesterbrook Elementary School in McLean, VA.

In July of 2016, our family discussed how we could help Stanton students more directly by providing books.  After meeting with Stanton administrators we purchased early-reader take home books for PreK – 2nd graders, which otherwise had not been budgeted for the school.

Over the past four summers we’ve collected gently used children’s books for PreK – 5th grade.  We delivered empty reusable bags to hundreds of doors in our Virginia neighborhood, asking for donations.  We returned weeks later to pick up bags filled with chapter books, atlases, picture books, dictionaries, series books and graphic novels. Thanks to the generosity of our neighborhood, at each summer’s end we receive many thousands of books.

We bring the books to Linda Kuzmack who stores them according to reading level and content. Throughout the school year we accompany her on several of the many deliveries she makes with carloads of books for Stanton students, tailored specifically for each child, or for classrooms, culminating with an end of year free Book Fair to ensure children have reading material all summer. We also initiated a summer reading program in 2019 and attended two Back to School events to promote literacy.  To date we’ve collected more than 10,000 books for Stanton’s children.

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The Gamba Family Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit established in 2006 by John and Mary Anne Gamba with commitment to the power of education.