I am visiting my son in Boston and he just moved to South End (between downtown and South Boston). It is a place in transition with new buildings going up on almost every block. Around the corner from him in the redbrick Medieval Manor a local nonprofit, More Than Words, is opening a new used bookstore. It is more than words/books as it provides job training and life skills to at risk youth in the neighborhood. Based on the Google listing I walked there expecting to go book shopping.
Unfortunately the old bookstore is closed so they can remodel and reopen later this summer with far more space, a coffee shop, and meeting space. Fortunately they were hosting an open house today so I was able to take a tour of their warehouse facility and learn more about their youth program.
It all begins with book donations from people in the greater Boston community. This is a community of readers and it looked like the quality of donations was a notch above what the Sacramento Library receives. Program participants are paid to sort the books, check the ISBN numbers for marketability, catalog the books into their tracking system, shelve the books, retrieve them as on-line orders come in, and ship them out.
They also have kiosks like the one at the local coffeeshop where people can select a book and pay a flat $4 via Venmo and start reading.
The new bookstore location (opening this summer) will give even more job training opportunities. Program participants are held accountable for showing up on time to work, not missing days of work, setting goals and achieving them, school attendance and more. They make a base salary of $108 a month and if they perform well they have opportunities to work more hours and earn more. There is also a clear path to earning more responsibility.
It is hugely inspiring. My son forwarded me a crowdfunding appeal later the same day and I was happy to make a contribution. I am happy to report that they exceeded both their goal of $50,000 and their stretch goal of $75,000.
Also in the neighborhood: Grab breakfast or lunch at Cuppa Coffee, the Aussie coffee shop around the corner on Traveler Street. Be sure to get the egg and cheese pie, or lamb pie, or other meat pies specially made to their recipes. There is also a Blue Bikes bikeshare kiosk on the same corner.
americanjulie.com 