Imagine throngs of kids poring through boxes of books to choose the very best ones, parents standing nearby and smiling at the kids’ enthusiasm or sifting through them exclaiming, “Hey, how about this book!” Volunteers in bright green t-shirts providing information on summer programs and parent resources, and helping kids fill in a data chart showing participation from each school.
More than 30,000 people attended the Eastside Heritage Center’s Strawberry Festival this year. Eastside Pathways joined the festivities for the second year in a row and saw significant increases in participation. The festival is hosted at Crossroads Park in Bellevue and attracts a diverse crowd of families. Festivities kicked off at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 22nd and continued Sunday, June 23rd until 5 p.m.
At the event, we focused on the Campaign for Grade Level Reading. The themes of three of the booths arose from the Collaboratives that support this Initiative:
Summer and Extended Learning: Active and Learning All Summer.
School Readiness: Learning Begins at Birth.
Absenteeism: Making Connections for Kids’ Success.
Our fourth and final booth was home to a book give-away. Throughout the festival, we handed out passports for a scavenger hunt. Families visited our booths and our partner booths and received stamps at each location. After six stamps they returned to the passport tent and were given free books, stickers, pencils, and bookmarks. The following partners participated:
- Bellevue Schools Foundation
- Chess4Life
- City of Bellevue
- Eastside Heritage Center
- KidsQuest Children’s Museum
- Kindering
- Youth Eastside Services
The Bellevue Family YMCA, Boys and Girls Club of Bellevue, King County Public Health, Childcare Resources, Bellevue Special Needs PTA, and many other partners helped staff our Eastside Pathways booths.
The event was an amazing success! We redeemed 900 passports (550 on Saturday alone) and handed out over 4000 books! This was an incredible increase from 400 passports and 1500 books in 2012.
Over 30 youth and 20 adults volunteered over the weekend helping with setup, interviewing parents about how they encourage their kids to read, collecting passports and providing information to parents. An enormous thank you to our partners and volunteers who made this event such a success! We look forward to doing it again next year.
Article submitted by Emily Nassif, Eastside Pathways Intern.