West Palm Beach Library Foundation

Be well at mandel provides children and families in Palm Beach county access to vital social and therapeutic services with the addition of a social worker at the mandel Library. The program provides one-on-one case management, therapeutic support, and advocacy for life's most difficult challenges. Services include referrals and linkages to programs assisting with food, housing, mental health, childcare, domestic violence, mental health/substance use treatment, healthcare, and more.

Mandel mobile is the Library's outreach, wi-fi enabled minivan, which visits city parks and community resource centers. The mandel mobile has assisted over 1,800 residents of West Palm Beach where they live and play. Library staff, including a certified educator, provide essential resources to the community directly which include homework assistance, learning english, job and community service applications, and distribution of hygiene kits and diapers.

The afterschool homework centers are the anchor of the Library's after- school initiatives and serve as a lifeline for children and teens by providing free academic support to students grades k-12. Elementary and teen homework centers are open four days a week and on sunday and provide everything students need to successfully study, learn and complete homework and research projects. Equipped with basic supplies like paper and pencils, laptops, printers, databases and the latest technologies, homework centers offer educational games, software and tools, and are stocked with nourishing snacks to feed bodies and minds. Most importantly, elementary and teen homework centers are staffed with teachers certified by the school district of Palm Beach county, and by professional librarians as well as volunteers and americorp members. These adults serve as teachers, advocates, mentors and cheerleaders for children and teens on their educational journeys. Less than one-third of kindergarten-aged children who live in West Palm Beach, specifically those in the public elementary schools that are nearest the Library, arrive in their classrooms ready to learn. These numbers improve only slightly when students are tested for grade level reading in third grade, where 40% of children are proficient readers. Research shows that children who have not mastered reading by third grade are less likely to graduate. The homework centers both in elementary and teen area average over 1,000 students attending over 170 sessions with an average of six kids a day.

Youth programming at the mandel public Library provides free weekly educational, artistic, healthy living and exercise programs, and more. Free youth programming is designed for infants, children, and teens. During the fiscal year, the following statistics are drawn from just a few of the many free programs that the Library Foundation obtains funding and provides support for the mandel public Library. Summer learning: 1,196 attendees, sunshine story time: 738 attendees, virtual story time: 2,868 attendees, grab and go kits and childcare outreach kits: 8,256 provided. In all, over 12,130 children and teens visited the Library to participate in programs. The Library is a safe place for children and teens to come and learn, play, create, and grow. Adult programming, helping adults thrive. The Library's award-winning, dynamic, lifelong learning programs encourage participants to explore talents, grow as individuals, and learn more about the world. Programs such as get that job, studio 411, and healthy lifestyles exercise programs encompass a wide range of programs including academic lectures conducted by university professors, exhibitions, civic engagement panel discussions, audience performance classes, professional music performances, an aspiring author series, and hands on art classes. The Library averages over 15,920 adults attending over 1,280 adult programs to learn, develop new skills, expand their relational networks and enrich their lives. Adult programming creates opportunities for seniors to stay independent by providing mental stimulation. It also allows the arts and culture to flourish among people who have the time to dedicate to a newly learned art form, and it combines, under one roof, academic lectures, hands on arts, performance arts, performances, panel discussions, job readiness programs, free exercise programs and more each week. Adult programming provides a place and platform for people to connect to new ideas, new experiences, and to one another. The volume, variety, breadth and depth of offerings is unprecedented in the county. Winter and summer reading initiatives are designed to prevent the dreaded academic "summer slide." Summer learning offers our youth the following benefits: weekly small group tutoring by certified teachers and a reading program that provides gift books for upwards of 3,000 children (ages k-12), thus helping foster a love of reading and helping youths build home libraries. Activities designed to keep youths motivated and engaged include art, fitness, science, dance, crafting, technology, music and more. Over 1,900 readers have read almost 400,000 minutes and over 12,000 books in 2022. Job help & small business resources is a program that focuses on helping those who are underemployed, unemployed, or veterans eager to find work. Workshop instructors and career counselors assist job seekers with preparing eye-catching rsums and cover letters, completing job applications and preparing for the interview process and follow-up. The Library has started a new small business program that has worked with twenty-five citizens to launch their businesses from start to finish. Over 335 citizens have attended job training workshops at the Library and have initiated over 350 searches to the Library's online job resources. Storytimes to the community is a program in which librarians continue to bring the Library into the community by providing face-to-face story times to our local daycares and schools. Librarians design, create, pack, and distribute weekly story time kits based on themes for teachers to use in their classrooms. For classrooms that cannot have a live reader, our librarians have recorded thirty-one interactive story times to share with our classrooms. Studio 411 is the central location for anyone interested in arts. It offers hands-on art classes for anyone interested in painting, drawing, sculpture, cricut creations, and sewing. Patrons can use the studio for personal projects, class projects, collaboration on new projects, and guidance provided by local artists.