The Children’s Literacy Foundation, a Waterbury-based nonprofit serving children in Vermont and New Hampshire through books and storytelling, is planning to move out of its founder’s home and into new headquarters.
The change will allow a major expansion of services, according to executive director Duncan McDougall. The foundation, which operated above his garage in Waterbury Center since its inception 24 years ago, has outgrown the space.
“The development of our new headquarters is perhaps the most exciting step we’ve taken as an organization,” McDougall said. “We have grown steadily over time, but this will really help us evolve into an entirely different level of capacity.”
The organization’s mission is “to inspire a love of reading and writing among children up to age 12 throughout New Hampshire and Vermont.” They primarily serve children who are low-income and based in rural areas, and kids who are otherwise at-risk of falling behind in literacy skill development.
CLiF’s growth has been immense: In its first year, it held six events with one professional presenter and a total attendance of 500 children, while giving away $7,000 worth of books, according to McDougall.
Last year, it hosted 788 events with 64 professional presenters — authors, illustrators, poets, storytellers and graphic novelists — and a total attendance of 52,700 children. Nearly $1 million worth of brand-new books were donated.
In total, CLiF has worked with more than 350,000 young readers and writers and donated $10 million worth of new books, McDougall said.
The organization employs six staff members, and might have more by the time it relocates to the new office space, he said. CLiF also has more than 15 volunteers who help staff with stickering and boxing tens of thousands of books for distribution at schools, libraries, shelters, prisons, affordable housing complexes and programs for migrants and refugees.
When two and a half tons of children’s books were dropped off at CLiF’s small facility last week, it was a challenge to maneuver the large shipping truck to the garage, McDougall said. The new headquarters will have a more efficient delivery setup — and will be on flatter land.
The facility will be larger and “designed exactly for our specific needs,” McDougall said. Those needs include storing more than 20,000 children’s books at a time before donating them to children across the Twin States.
The pandemic exacerbated CLiF’s challenges in securing the land and resources to build the new headquarters. “As many other organizations have discovered, prices jumped significantly and lead times have extended, and we have found the same thing,” McDougall said.
The project is estimated to cost $2 million, with construction scheduled to wrap up in March. CLiF has already raised more than half that amount and expects to reach its goal by the end of this year. The new headquarters, located along Route 100 between Waterbury and Stowe, will be only 2 miles from McDougall’s garage.
McDougall started the children’s literacy project after working in business for years, and he had also been a teacher and a volunteer with refugee families.
“I knew the immense impact that developing strong reading and writing skills could have on a child’s life and their future prospects and I decided that I wanted to try to create an organization that could help share a love of reading and writing among as many (as possible) of those children who had the fewest resources and faced the highest risks of growing up with low literacy skills,” he said.
McDougall said the facility won’t have a space for events, as CLiF always aims to take its programs to where the kids already are.
The one exception McDougall has in mind is planned for the end of August: a groundbreaking ceremony for the new headquarters, with children and families in attendance.
Disclosure: VTDigger has partnered with the Children’s Literacy Foundation during member drives.
