Everychild Funds Libraries For Low-Income Schools
Palisadian Post, February 28, 2002

Everychild Foundation board members visit a Wonder of Reading library already up and running at Clover Avenue Elementary School. Board members include, from left, Deborah Colbert, Jacqueline Caster, Eve Jaffe, and Cynthia Alexander.

Palisadian Jacqueline Caster and her compatriots continue to improve the lives of Los Angeles children with various projects, including 15 new libraries and a mobile dental clinic at low-income elementary schools. Caster started the organization, the Everychild Foundation, with a simple concept. Women who joined would donate $5,000 each year and then vote on how to spend that money on one big project.

This year, the money, $385,000, has been designated for building 15 libraries in low-income LAUSD elementary schools. The LAUSD budget has no funds for libraries or librarians, so the donation will not only build the libraries, but also stock them with books and train library volunteers. Each school must also raise a portion of the construction costs to assure the school's commitment to the library and empower the parents and the children with an entrepreneurial spirit and an ability to create change. The libraries will be built through the donation recipient, Wonder of Reading, over four years with the first library opening in July. This donation marks the foundation's second big initiative.

Everychild began in August 2000, and in four months, it raised $230,000, which paid for the first project, a mobile dental clinic to serve 30 low-income LAUSD elementary schools. The donation went to Queenscare, a non-profit health care provider, and it was designed to focus on second and third graders at the 30 schools. However, since the clinic opened at Union Avenue Elementary School, the workers uncovered more staggering dental problems than anticipated.

Among the school's second and third graders, the clinic provided 523 fillings, 164 crowns, 136 root canals, 161 tooth extractions, 1,427 sealants and seven referrals to USC Dental School for surgery. Oral hygiene and nutrition lessons were also given to 2,639 parents and students. The need was so great that the clinic never left Union Avenue its first year. As a result, the clinic became a catalyst for more clinics with other community organizations and members purchasing five more mobile dental clinics to help care for youngsters' teeth.

The children of Everychild members also experience the giving spirit each year at the Everychild Family Day picnic. In 2001, the young people sponsored and stuffed backpacks for underprivileged kindergartners at four different LAUSD schools. Guess Jeans donated 600 backpacks, and teachers provided a school supplies wish list, which was granted with workbooks, glue, scissors, pencils, pads of paper and crayons. When the backpacks were delivered, the kindergartners were ecstatic, since many had never before had school supplies. In September 2002, the next Family Day picnic will provide shoes, socks and underwear for more children in need. Everychild has also begun hosting salons with speakers including LAUSD superintendent Roy Romer and State Senator Sheila Kuehl. These salons are intended to help interested Everychild members learn more about the needs facing local children. For more information on Everychild, contact 310-573-2153.