The Your Children's Bookshelf volunteer team will host free book fairs for children and their families in Illinois. The book fairs will take place at various locations in Illinois including but not limited to Children's Group Homes, Foster Family Centers, Literacy Organizations and Social Service Agencies including Food Pantries, Domestic Violence Shelters, and agencies/schools servicing low income households. This program will be coordinated out of our Illinois HQ location.

Our Volunteers will bring 300 - 600 gently used or new children's books to each book fair from the YCB library. The children's books range from newborn to eighth grade reading levels and offer a wide variety of interests. We will encourage each child to choose at least six books at each fair. We anticipate providing 5000 books to children through 10 book fairs annually.

This program will take approximately 40% of our organization's time.

This volunteer activity usually happens twice a month (Full Day). It’s also dependent on how many books we can source in a given month.

Your Children’s Bookshelf sources children’s books by developing relationships with local bookstores and publishers.

We solicit donations from individuals and businesses for children’s books and funds to purchase the books.

In addition, we will research and source at local sales such as garage and rummage sales.

Once we have acquired the books, we manage our library in McHenry, Illinois.

Our volunteers then will identify and level the books according to age group and reading level. Currently we offer gently used books from newborn to eighth grade.

Volunteers will make sure the book is cleaned, free of any marks or damage and then properly placed within the Your Children’s Bookshelf Library.