One of the pleasures of working for First Book is the opportunity to meet and work with outstanding volunteers, a vital component of our organization’s mission. Last week First Book staff traveled to the “City of Trees,” Boise, Idaho, to distribute 30,000 books to Advisory Boards and Recipient Groups all across the state. This trip to Boise marked the close of a federal grant for Idaho, which now has fifteen Advisory Boards across the entire state.

Our distribution in Boise took place at the White Cloud Coffee warehouse, where the White Cloud Coffee founder and CEO Jerome Eberharter and his wonderful staff welcomed First Book with open arms.

Job Corps students and staff with First Book staff members. On the far right is Ron Thompson, the Production Manager of White Cloud Coffee.

The 30,000 books that were donated for this distribution came in the form of gaylords, which means they were sent to us unsorted in extremely large boxes. Our volunteers were going to have to separate each one of the 30,000 titles by age group, and stack smaller boxes that would be counted later to fill orders.

The first day of our distribution, volunteers from our Boise State University Advisory Board and the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program (R.S.V.P.) came from all over the Boise area to help us out. Because our volunteers had to sort each title, there was quite a bit of heavy lifting for our volunteers. It didn’t take them long to figure out a system that allowed them to work quickly and easily, and by the end of the day our volunteers had sorted nearly half of all the books!

The second day of the distribution we had volunteers from Job Corps in Nampa, Idaho. Job Corps is the nation’s largest and most effective residential and career-training program for eligible youth ages 16 through 24, with community service as a part of the curriculum.

Painting apprentices from Job Corps, volunteering at the First Book distribution.

When First Book asked Job Corps to help at the distribution in Boise, more than 60 students volunteered! One of the Job Corps students commented, “It’s really nice that we can all come together to do some good.” The importance of First Book’s mission really hit a nerve for some of the students. Another student was motivated to volunteer because she had spent time helping out her mother’s own literacy program back home.

What happened next was remarkable. Because of their strong work ethic and enthusiasm, the Job Corps students finished sorting every title into age appropriate boxes and filled every single book order by 1:30 in the afternoon! The same Job Corps volunteers were scheduled to help out for two days, but since they had finished so quickly, there was no need for them to return!

Our last group of volunteers was from Hewlett Packard. They were real troopers and stuck around all day to label all of the boxes for shipping, helping load up the cars/trucks/trailers of people picking up their book orders! The Hewlett Packard crew got to witness first-hand the “Boise or bust” mentality of our Recipient Groups (flat tires and engine problems are only minor setbacks) as well as the look of surprise on our friendly UPS man’s face when he saw the large (and heavy) amount of books that he had to load into his truck!

Thank you to everyone involved for making this distribution in Boise a success! It is because of the generous (and hilarious) staff members of White Cloud Coffee (yes, Ron, you too) and our hard-working volunteers that we were able to get these books into the hands of children all across the state of Idaho! Congratulations to everyone on a job well done!