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March 15, 2024
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Who would have guessed that a chance comment made during morning tea break would determine the path my life would take when I retired. The idea for Story Store was born when I was asked whether there was anywhere you could take books you didn't want but that school libraries might. With my retirement looming large on the horizon, I was excited but also a little apprehensive as to how I would fill my time. And here it was…the answer. From that moment things moved quickly. By the end of January 2023 shelving was being installed in our premises at EPIT (Education Partnership & Innovation Trust) in Onehunga.
Since our very first visit from St Mary's School in Avondale in March 2023 we have happily donated nearly 5,000 books to 41 schools from the Hokianga to Porirua, and impacted over 10,000 children!!
Obviously, we cannot help everyone so we have three criteria for schools to meet: Firstly, there must be a need for fresh books in the library - an insufficient budget. Secondly, school management must be inherently 'pro Library'... ie they won't take away what budget the library does have to use it elsewhere in the school. Thirdly... and most importantly, there needs to be someone passionate about books/reading leading the Library space. It's these wonderful humans who engage students, who connect them with their next (even though they don't know it at the time) favourite book.
Geographically speaking we help schools in the North Island. This is due to exorbitant freight costs. The aforementioned freight cost is also the reason the limits for online orders are different.
Story Store works best when we have stock turning over - it's all about 'books in' and 'books out'. 'Books in' are the donations of immaculate books that we receive from individuals or through schools holding book drives for us. Books must be pristine because library books lead a hard life so need to start out in excellent condition. AND it sends a subliminal message to the children that they are worthy of nice books!
When we receive a donation the books are sorted into 'A' and 'B' depending on their condition. The best of the best are 'A' - these are catalogued then shelved. The 'B' grade books have some small defect eg a name written on the end papers. These ones are not catalogued and if a school selects them, they know and understand about the defect.
'Books out' is when schools visit us to select books. This often proves to be an overwhelming task because there are so many books to choose from. We get around this by having 'specials' - just like a shop except absolutely NO MONEY changes hands! If a school were to take advantage of all the specials plus their quota of 50 books from both 'A' and 'B' grade areas, they may well take away over 200 books. If we were to put a dollar value on that, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000.
Since March 2023, we've donated nearly 5,000 books to 41 schools from the Hokianga to Porirua, impacting over 10,000 children across the North Island.
Click on the map to explore the schools we work with.
March 15, 2024
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March 10, 2024
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