Our Mission
Book Harvest provides an abundance of books and ongoing literacy support to families and their children from birth and serves as a model for communities committed to ensuring that children are lifelong readers and learners.
Our Vision
Our vision is of a world in which reading, learning, and access to information are considered rights, not privileges, so that all children thrive.
Our Core Values
Our core values have shaped Book Harvest since inception and are the foundation upon which the organization’s mission, vision, strategies, and tactics are built.
1. All children have the right to own books from birth.
Books are essential to the well-being and healthy development of children. Books, readily available and in abundance, are vital to school readiness, academic success, and lifelong learning.
2. Parents know what is best for their children and are passionately committed to their success.
Parents are their child’s first and most important brain-builders and have the power to ignite and sustain their children’s literacy development from birth. We will meet parents where they are to support them in realizing their goals for their children.
3. All children are born with the ability to succeed.
When we provide the tools and support ALL children deserve, foster their roles as active participants in their own literacy journeys, and honor their inherent brilliance, we are laying the groundwork for productive and meaningful lives.
4. Books must serve as “mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors” for all children.
Books must portray all children, honoring diverse backgrounds, languages, abilities, and perspectives, and include stories by and about people of color.
5. We CAN create the world our children deserve.
We believe in the capacity of collective goodness and collective action to transform the eco-system currently failing America’s children and create a more equitable world.
6. We are committed to research.
Continuous self-assessment, including rigorous external evaluation, is essential to identifying best practices as we expand our efforts to rewrite outcomes.
Book Harvest Guiding Principles
Book Harvest is an organization that aspires to rewrite literacy experiences and outcomes, ensuring that all children can feast at the table of words and vocabulary from birth; we believe this is a necessary precondition for flourishing.
In doing this work, our team is guided by these unwavering internal principles.
We are mission-driven.
We are passionate about helping children and families have what they need to thrive.
We believe in parents.
We listen to parents; we trust parents; and we seek out their perspectives to guide our decisions and our work.
We share joyful optimism.
Our work to share stories and build home libraries is rooted in joy; we feel hope for the future, always.
We lead with abundance.
We share our resources freely; we are inspired by the concept of plenty, and we believe it is possible.
We reject the status quo.
We innovate and think outside the box, beyond the constraints of existing systems.
We persevere.
We work tirelessly to overcome obstacles, create viable alternatives to broken systems, and realize our goals.
We are dependable.
We meet or exceed our commitments, on time and with excellence.
We hold ourselves accountable.
We rigorously evaluate, and we are clear-eyed about what works and where we can improve.
We are ambitious.
We seek population-level solutions to the population-level challenges that children and families face around literacy.
We aspire to be anti-racist.
We work to identify, understand, and dismantle racism in our organization and in our larger world; we recognize that this is constant work that requires courage and honesty.
We support each other.
Together we create and sustain a caring, kind, compassionate work environment.
Our Theory of Change
If:
We provide families with ongoing access to literacy resources and support…
And:
1. We start at birth and partner with families throughout their child’s first decade.
2. We meet families where they are.
3. We provide lots of culturally diverse books and plentiful resources.
4. We embrace everyone in our community.
5. We hold an unshakable commitment to justice, equity, and equal opportunity for all people.
6. We focus on evaluation and continuous improvement.
7. We have a strong organization.
8. We expand our program models statewide and nationwide.
9. We have big dreams.
Then:
We contribute to a world in which all children can thrive in school and in life.
