Streetside Library

About Streetside Library

Streetside Library improves literacy and educational opportunities by bringing high-quality, diverse, and relevant books directly to young people and families with limited access to them.

We believe reading is more than an academic skill. It is a gateway to confidence, connection, imagination, and future opportunity. Across Greater New Orleans, many children and teens lack consistent access to books that reflect their interests, identities, and experiences. Streetside Library helps close that gap by creating welcoming, community-based access points for reading.

Our work includes building and maintaining small libraries in shelters, transitional housing programs, schools, and community spaces; providing books for children, teens, and adults to keep; supporting classroom and site-based libraries; and partnering with organizations that serve families facing housing instability, poverty, and other barriers to literacy access.

We currently work with partners including the New Orleans Women & Children’s Shelter, Covenant House, Ozanam Inn, Raintree House, Apple Street Learning Center/The Jesus Project, Love Your Neighbor NOLA, Who Dat Barbershop, and local schools and teachers. Through these partnerships, we provide curated book collections, book fairs, literacy activities, family reading resources, and free books to help young readers build their own home libraries.

Your Give NOLA Day gift helps us purchase books, restock partner libraries, support literacy events, and continue showing up with books that children and families are excited to read.

Every book placed in a child’s hands is an invitation: to read, to imagine, to learn, and to see themselves in the story.

Testimonials

What stood out about working with Streetside Library was their commitment to providing all the services of a traditional library. Most children who are experiencing homelessness are under the academic level of their age, and Streetside Library is teaching the skills that many of our children do not have.

What sets you apart is your unwavering consistency. Not only have you created a library, but you also continuously ensure that it remains an enriching, welcoming space with books that reflect our diverse occasions and seasons.

Your commitment to consistently providing a diverse range of books, especially those that resonate with specific events and holidays, has made a profound impact.