Non-Profit Fundraising Class Collecting Books for Young Readers

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Students in Cathryn Edelstein’s Non-Profit Fundraising Campaigns class have been working all semester on a campaign to bring inclusive books to a Boston public school. Now it’s your turn to help.

The Emerson community is invited to drop off gently used books for kids in kindergarten through 12th grade at any Tatte Bakery & Café location, or at Ned Devine’s at Faneuil Hall Marketplace through Tuesday, April 23. Tatte partners will hand deliver the books to the Dr. William W. Henderson K-12 Inclusion School in Dorchester, this year’s recipient of the On the Same Page Boston (OTSPB) book drive.

“We believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to be a part of a story,” said Edelstein, Communication Studies Senior Executive-in-Residence and founder of OTSPB.

Each fall, a Boston public school is selected to receive OTSPB books, through donations from an Amazon Wish List in the fall.

“The program continues in spring by encouraging donations of gently used books with an emphasis on collecting diverse and inclusive books representing students’ lives, with the hope that kids will see themselves as the main characters,” Edelstein said.

The Henderson School, Boston’s first fully inclusion K-12 school, is a semi-autonomous “innovation school” serving approximately 850 students – a quarter of which are students with disabilities. The school received 448 books from the OTSPB campaign last fall, on top of a one-time revitalization fund of $90,000 for library books from Boston Public Schools and $15,000 in furniture, according to Henderson School librarian Kaitlyn Brohel.

“Circulation is up; students are taking out books at lightning speed,” Brohel said. “Teachers are layering text sets to build knowledge across units of study, and students are loving graphic novels. The more books in our libraries and classrooms, the better! This is an amazing moment for our Henderson readers!” 

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Edelstein created On the Same Page in Fall 2019 as a student-run project for her Non-Profit Fundraising class. Through OTSPB, students have facilitated donations of more than 6,000 books for Boston Public Schools.