ByWater Solutions Announces September 2021 Community Giveback Winner

by Kalleen Marquise on Sep 15, 2021

Each month, ByWater Solutions selects one library to be awarded $500. These funds are meant to support libraries and their communities and fill gaps in funding to further library goals.

We are very excited to announce our first winner of the ByWater Community Giveback, the Silver Lake Public Library Foundation in Silver Lake, Kansas.

The Silver Lake Public Library Foundation, Inc. was organized to further educational purposes through improvement and support of library services. They provide advocacy, private financial support and innovative leadership to transform Silver Lake Public Library into a vibrant life-long learning center that builds the community and enriches lives.

The funds from the ByWater Community Giveback will be used for the Silver Lake Library’s Snag-a-Snack Program. The money granted by ByWater Community Giveback will help the Foundation to limit the amount of funds they have to pull from their Children’s budget for the program.

The funds for the program go towards providing healthy after-school snacks to any school aged child in the Silver Lake School District. Their main goal is to reduce after-school hunger in the communities of Silver Lake by providing two non-perishable snack items to any student, three days a week when school is in session and when the library is open. Snacks are served Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Through this afterschool-program they hope not only to feed children but to increase library service connections with youth and families in their community. In the 2 years that they have led the Snag-a-Snack Program, the library has served 3,814 students. In the 2019-2020 school year, they served 1,605 students and in the 2020-2021 school year they served 2,209 students. They hope to continue to see an increase in their numbers for this school year and beyond.

Program Follow-Up

With the $500.00 gifted to the Silver Lake Public Library Foundation we were able to purchase 1,330 snacks for our snag-a-snack program. This program is run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, during the days that the Silver Lake Schools are in session and the library is open. On these three days, we provide each kid that comes in after school with a snack bag that contains two snacks. These snacks ranged anywhere from fruit, to cheese sticks, to popcorn or other small snacks that could be easily eaten.

With this money we were able to hand out 665 grab bags from September 13th to November 5th with a total of 21 days served to the community. The Library saw an average of 31 students each day during this time period. This is an increase of the daily average number of students we served during the last school year. Every year since the beginning of this program we have seen more and more kids come into the library for these snacks and this has become a service that families in our community count on.

We have always received positive feedback from our patrons about this program, but this year we were surprised and pleased about the number of teens that wanted to volunteer to help hand out snacks. In the past, this was a purely staff run program, but as of today is solely run by volunteers from our community. Not only have we seen more kids come into the library to get snacks, but have seen more people involved with the library, as well!

About the ByWater Community Giveback

We will select one library a month to donate $500 to their Non-profit 501c3 organization such as Friends of the Library, Library Foundation, or other funding entity. These funds are meant to support libraries and their communities and fill gaps in funding to further library goals. We LOVE libraries. Our team is made up of librarians and library fanatics. We're always looking for ways to give back and create opportunities where we can to support libraries. This is a small token of thanks for all the hard work libraries do in their communities every day.

Learn More About the Program and How to Apply.

If you have more questions, please contact: Outreach@bywatersolutions.com