Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Moberly.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Emily. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
At 22 years old, I found myself teaching English to a bunch of high school students at a bilingual school in Honduras.
I was a tough teacher who, for a period of several months, made my students write essays every day.
One morning I was sitting at my desk reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” (one of the only books I brought with me to Central America. One of my over achieving students interrupted me to turn in her essay early.
“Why are you reading,” she asked with a slight tone of disgust. “You’re the teacher. You could be doing anything.”
Obviously she had never read this book, I thought to myself. So I began to tell my student about Jem and Atticus and Scout. Before you knew it, the entire class was listening. If you have experience with teenagers, then you know this in and of itself was a minor miracle.
I asked me students to tell me about one of their favorite books. Only one raised her hand. The rest confessed they had never read for fun and didn’t have a favorite book.
I did some research and found that our city had almost no access to books. There was just a small bookstore and an inadequate library that was barely open.
No wonder my students had never fallen in love with reading! They had grown up without books.
When I went home to California for Christmas I used all my extra cash to buy books at used book stores. I filled my suitcase with everything I could find from Goosebumps to Catcher in the Rye. I introduced my ragamuffin collection to my classes as Ms. Moberly’s Library.
It took a few weeks, but eventually they fell in love with it! Most of my 87 students found a book that they connected with. I got to watch them fall in love with reading for the first time.
It changed their attitude toward reading and made them more imaginative!
My students inspired me to start Traveling Stories to give that same experience to children all over the world and even here in my own backyard.
Since I was a child, books have been one of my best friends. Reading has not only been a source of comfort and escape, but it’s also provided the skills and information I needed to turn my dreams into reality.
Through Traveling Stories I get to inspire imaginations and provide kids’ with the literacy skills they need to turn their own dreams into reality.
Has it been a smooth road?
Not at all! But it’s been an exciting one!
The first five years I had a full time job on top of the work I did for Traveling Stories. It was exhausting!
One of the biggest struggles was convincing people to take me and my idea seriously. I was so young and had no experience running a successful nonprofit. I’m so thankful for the early supporters who truly took a chance on me and Traveling Stories. We wouldn’t have survived the start-up phase without them.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Traveling Stories story. Tell us more about the business.
At Traveling Stories our goal is to empower kids to outsmart poverty. We want to give them the literacy and money management skills they need to become productive members of society.
The way it works is that we set up mobile reading programs called StoryTents at community hotspots across San Diego every week. Our favorite hotspots are farmers markets, restaurants, festivals and malls! The StoryTent is a 10ft by 10ft tent with carpets, books, and smiling volunteers. Kids visit the tent, pick out a book that interests them, and then read with a volunteer. For every book read, the child earns a book buck. These bucks can be redeemed for prizes and we have cool stuff that ranges from mechanical pencils for $1 all the way up to skateboards and field trips and Easy Bake Ovens for $250+ book bucks! In this way, kids are becoming better readers but they’re also learning money management skills.
Our program specializes in making reading fun …especially for reluctant readers. Our goal is to transform those reluctant readers into confident ones. At first, they’re usually motivated by the prizes. But as they find books they like and become better at reading, we find that the kids start reading more because they enjoy it.
We’re different from other reading programs for a few reasons…
1) We set up in the community where people are already hanging out.
2) We serve kids 2-12 years old at the same time
3) We read one-on-one or in small groups (instead of having one reader read to the whole group at once)
4) We incorporate book bucks and financial literacy
For me, I was surprised when I learned how many kids struggle with reading here in our own country. Kids who can’t read well by 4th grade are up to 15x more likely to drop out of school. Sadly, here in the U.S., 82% of disadvantaged kids are not reading at grade level by 4th grade. (NAEP, Annie E. Casey Foundation).
When I learned that I was shocked and I knew I had to do something. There are a lot of awesome educational organizations out there, so when I started Traveling Stories I wanted to tackle the problem in a new way. I wanted to focus on kids who didn’t like reading and couldn’t afford a tutor. I wanted to make reading fun so that eventually they would be begging to read more. So far our program is working! 🙂
We’re serving 3,000 kids a year in San Diego alone and 100% of the parents we surveyed said that it’s making a difference on their kids’ reading levels. Last year we had 4 kids “graduate” from our program and apply to become volunteers. To me that’s amazing! To watch kids fall in love with reading at our program and then want to give back and help younger kids discover that same love – ah! It’s amazing to me!!
Right now our StoryTents are in El Cajon, City Heights, and Imperial Beach every week. We’re working hard as a team to open 3 new locations this year and to expand our programs to more kids. We’ll be listing these new locations on our website as soon as the schedules are confirmed.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I’ve already noticed this shift taking place, but I think it’s going to get even stronger. People are expecting a higher standard of professionalism and transparency from nonprofit organizations. I think it’s awesome. Just because nonprofits exist for a mission doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to run efficiently and effectively. We’re still a business!
I’ll be the first to admit – I didn’t start a nonprofit because I wanted to spend all day running a business. I wanted to change the world and empower kids. But I’ve learned that the more we can apply good business principals to the way we run things at Traveling Stories, the more effective we’ll be at achieving our mission.
Pricing:
- $17 donation funds our StoryTent program for 3 children for an entire month
- $20,000 funds 1 StoryTent program every week for an entire year
- $260k – Every student who does not complete high school costs our society an estimated $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes & productivity.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2801 Camino del Rio S Ste 302
San Diego, CA 92108 - Website: www.travelingstories.org
- Phone: 6192690438
- Email: emily@travelingstories.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travelingstories/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/travelingstories
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/trvlingstories
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