Dear Friends, Volunteers and Supporters,
I am pleased to introduce myself as the new president of My Own Book.
Our founder, Burt Freeman, is taking a less active role in the overall implementation and supervision of the program – but he is still very much with us.
I have been involved with My Own Book for about three years. I come from the liaison that Burt made, affiliating with the Social Service Board of the New York Society for Ethical Culture to help establish long term management stability for the program.
My experience with MOB has been inspiring and invigorating. Interacting with the children, seeing the dedication and accomplishment of our volunteers, and for me, an ex-industrial fellow, seeing our education system and professional staff perform. And all of this mostly in the shadow of Covid. Really impressive.
During the last school year, we were fortunate that Scholastic worked with us to host MOBF book fairs for our forty schools that wanted to participate. A bit over 3,700 students got to buy books they wanted and were able to start their own home library.
This year we are going back mostly to Barnes and Noble and appreciate their support. For the schools which are still Covid-shy, Scholastic is kindly continuing that program from last year. And we are pleased to report that we have been able to increase the buying amount for each student from $50 to $60.
We know that we can only accomplish our goals with the continuing dedicated work of our volunteers and the staff of the participating schools. They are our stars.
I am confident that we will be able to succeed, and I am optimistic we will be able to expand the schools and students that we serve.
Sincerely
Vincent Brancato
President
My Own Book Fund, Inc.
September 2022
