St Louis County Library Foundation

A goal of the Foundation is to enrich the Library's educational mission by bringing communities together and providing equal opportunities to learn. Slcl has partnered with seven St. Louis area hospitals to provide new parents with a born to read bag containing a board book and early literacy information. The bag also contains a card that can be brought to a Library branch to receive a second book and two cardinals vouchers. Parents also receive an invitation to celebrate their child's first birthday at the Library where they will receive a third book. Since the program began in 2015, the Foundation has provided over 116,000 bags to new parents. A companion to the born to read program is the raise a reader program that provides bags filled with literacy information, a book, welcome materials and other small fun items to children of various ages at their adoption proceedings. The gift of reading program, started in fall 2019, provides books to students in the St. Louis County juvenile detention center. The program expanded in fall 2022 to include bridges, an alternative high school. The head start program provides wonderbooks/vox books and activity materials to children ages 3-5 at jennings urban league to promote early literacy concepts. The Foundation also works to bridge the digital divide by securing funding for patrons to have access to wi-fi hotspots and chromebook bundles. For children ages 10-14, slcl's popular coding 101 program gives kids the chance to learn basic coding skills and take home a free chromebook. Access to programming like this inspires children to investigate career paths in stem related fields. Through the excel adult high school program, St. Louis residents ages 25 and older have the chance to earn a high school diploma and career certificate. Since 2017, 117 students have completed the program.

The Foundation further promotes reading by hosting events with noted authors. The St. Louis County Library author series is one of the biggest and most popular author event series at any public Library in the country, bringing in dozens of authors and thousands of readers to share memorable and stimulating readings and discussions. There are three author series including the reading garden, gale medical arts, and westfall. These series highlight authors that focus on youth/teens, medicine, and politics/history. Additionally, the Foundation supports the St. Louis County Library's festivals including the storytelling festival, the little readers festival, and the St. Louis teen book festival. In 2022, St. Louis County Library welcomed over 450 readers to the St. Louis region's first in-person book festival dedicated to teen readers.

The Foundation provides direct support to St. Louis County Library for construction of the clark family branch as well as funding for educational programs and employee engagement & development.