On Saturday, April 20, Live Like Coco Foundation will host the Run for Reading at Pinto Lake County Park in Watsonville.
Now in its eighth year, this event funds critical community literacy programs. This also celebrates the birthday of Coco Lazenby, a self-described “book lover, cat petter, and environmentalist” who was killed in a car accident in August 2015 at age 12 and is the inspiration for the foundation.
This year, there will be a 1K and 3K color run for kids. And the nonprofit is fundraising for a new bookmobile.
What’s a color run?
Kate Pavao with Live Like Coco Foundation’s future bookmobile.
Kate Pavao, founder of Live Like Coco Foundation, explains: “A color run just involves volunteers throwing colored powder at runners at certain checkpoints. We’re going to give all the kids a white Live Like Coco shirt so it really shows up! Should be fun!”
The foundation sponsored a grove in the Forest of Nisene Marks, a bench at LEO’s Haven, a garden at The Homeless Garden Project and a worm bin at Starlight Elementary’s Culinary Garden and Teaching Kitchen, plus hosted beach cleanups, organized field trips and sponsored scholarships for kids to try theater, art, swimming, horseback riding.
Starting in 2023, the focus has been on motivating children to read, in the belief that this is the key to improving young lives.
“Primarily, we give out books for ownership to local kids, through school and community
partnerships, with a focus on South County,” Pavao said. “We also support other local literacy efforts by sponsoring libraries and author events.”
Each year, the Live Like Coco Foundation delivers more than 20,000 books to kids in the Santa Cruz County area; nearly 72% are low-income and nearly half are English learners.
The Birthday Books from Coco program provides free, new books to students on their birthdays at local elementary schools.
Live Like Coco also offers Big Book Days program, a one-day celebration at a school when all students get to choose a book they love.
Pavao carefully tracks how many books are distributed.
Last school year, she said, “We reached 88% of the 7,139 students at our partner schools and we nearly doubled the number of books we distributed through Little Free Libraries, growing from 2,390 to 4,145 books.”
The next project is the bookmobile, which Pavao says will streamline book outreach and build excitement at giveaways and community events.
During school days, the bookmobile will serve as a library on wheels for the Watsonville Charter School of the Arts, which is the only campus in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District with no library of its own.
“In September, we purchased a fleet-maintained stepvan (imagine a UPS truck),” Pavao said.
She is working with a local vendor, Ruhne Racing, to convert the van into a bookmobile that can carry 2,000 books and is to debut at the annual Run for Reading in April.
She added, “We are working on contracts with PVUSD to bring our bookmobile to every district elementary school site during summer school, and to be able to open the mobile library to WCSA students at the start of the 2024-25 school year.”
The van cost $15,000, and Ruhne estimates the conversion at $64,855. With a vehicle wrap, insurance, and a maintenance account, the entire project is expected to cost $90,000.
So far, Pavao has paid $45,000, and aims to raise $20,000 at Run for Reading. She has applied for a local grant for$ 25,000 to cover the rest.
At the Run for Reading, all youth participants get a free book from the foundation and an invitation to a post-race party where community partners provide fun, educational, and engaging activities for children and their families.
To ensure that all children who want to participate can do so, a bus is provided to bring students from several Watsonville schools to the event.