The Centerpiece Project

Centerpieces made of flowers are beautiful, but gift-wrapped books are beautiful and meaningful! Use your next celebration as a way to perform tikkun olam (repairing the world) by using decorative book centerpieces for your tables. After the event, all books will be donated to local public elementary schools. Join the Jewish Coalition for Literacy’s effort to share the joy of reading and bring more books into the lives of local children. Do something different for your next cocktail party, birthday party or bar/bat mitzvah. For more information, please contact Roberta Rothman at 415.369-9978 x102 or jcl-sf@jcrc.org.

Book Donations

A single book can change a child’s life forever. Every year, the Jewish Coalition for Literacy makes it a priority to ensure that children not only attain the necessary skills to become successful readers, but also that they have access to children’s books. If you are looking for a way to contribute, consider donating new or gently used books, which will be distributed by JCL to tutoring sites. For your next birthday party, baby shower, or office holiday party, ask your guests to bring new children’s books instead of gifts. Whether you donate one or one hundred books, your donation will have a tremendous affect on our children and our community.

For lists of quality children’s literature, please click here.

Organize a Community Book Drive

Organizing a community book drive is always a great way to collect books for children. You can start a book drive at your local synagogue, community center, school, grocery store, or place of work. JCL is more than happy to assist in the coordination of a book drive.

Make a Contribution

You can make a financial contribution of any size, which will go towards the purchase of new books for Bay Area public schools. JCL will provide a thank-you letter that can be used for tax purposes. To contribute, checks should be made payable to ‘Jewish Coalition for Literacy’ and sent to the East Bay, San Francisco, or Peninsula JCL offices listed on the Contact Us page. If you would like the donation to be earmarked for books, please make a note of this. If the contribution has been made in memory or in honor of someone, please let us know and provide the contact information of where an acknowledgement letter can be sent.

If you have any questions or would like to get involved, please contact JCL at jcl-sf@jcrc.org.

See past JCL Book Drives…